The NSW State Government is promising that its plan to raise the school-leaving age to 17 will transform the future prospects of thousands of school students. If this works as intended, students who currently drop-out of school and end up in unskilled jobs or, worse, on long-term welfare payments, will benefit enormously from either completing the HSC or entering vocational education. Ultimately, these people will obtain skilled, more secure, and better paid jobs.
Employer groups have long being calling for an increase in the leaving age. They maintain that corralling more kids in school for longer will solve the chronic skills shortage that Australia has faced over the last decade or so of record economic growth. Premier Nathan Rees says he wants to arrest the state’s drop-out rate, which is presently the highest in the country, not only to ensure we are “smarter and more skilled to compete” in the global economy, but also to enable “all kids in NSW to have the best chance in life”.
The idea that is driving the government’s policy is that people end up in unskilled jobs or on welfare because they are under-educated. This is a fallacy. Forcing students who gain no benefit from additional formal education through extra years of schooling or training, in the vain hope this will equip them for skilled jobs for which they are unsuited, is pointless.
It seems obvious that the more education a person receives the greater the chances they will secure a “better” job. It is true that people who are capable of completing Year 12 and then going onto further education are less likely to be unemployed and are more likely to gain skilled and higher paid jobs. However, the government’s rationale for raising the leaving age is based on wishful thinking and is not supported by the evidence.
What the evidence shows is that for some people, staying longer at school provides no long-term benefit. In fact, for less-able students, who aren’t good at the exams and essays that higher education requires, more education leads to worse outcomes.
We know this thanks to research by the Australian Council of Educational Research, which has been tracking a sample of young people through school and into further education or employment.
The data reveals three key facts that directly contradict the arguments for increasing the leaving age. The ACER has found that students who complete Year 12 and then get a job do no better on average than those who left after Year 10 and got a job. It has also found that students who take up vocational courses after Year 10 do worse than those who leave and take up an apprenticeship. And students with low literacy and numeracy scores who finish Year 12 end up worse off than students of the same ability who leave early.
For this group of over-educated, low-ability students, their risk of unemployment turns out to be 3% higher and their weekly fulltime earnings turn out to be more than 2% lower for every additional year spent at school. In other words, “to have the best chance in life”, they would be better off leaving schooling, seeking employment, and acquiring on-the-job training.
The description “over educated, low ability” must be questioned. I don’t believe anyone can be over-educated. Perhaps some employers would be frustrated by an employee who has knowledge of the arts, can identify the planets and regards religion to be an opiate of the ignorant but isn’t an experienced short order cook at the age of seventeen. Regardless of statistics, a better educated person could have a more fulfilling life and make a greater contribution to the community. If Joan Sutherland had remained in the typing pool and Barbara Streisland been a hairdresser as her mother wanted, the whole world would be a lesser place.
Lack of ability to be educated is not always caused by of lack of ability – as well as poor facilities in some schools and some educators who cannot cope, there are students who, because of their parents lack of education, do not value education or do not have educational support – by that I mean, they must contribute to family responsibilities when they should be at school or doing their homework or they are humiliated by their poverty. Education is not just about satisfying an employer although it helps to be able to earn enough money to support the lifestyle of your choice. Education is to create a foundation for the the development of the whole person.
Logical really, more schooling does not change the ability of an adolescent to be successful in the world of work. Here in WA the school leaving age was increased to 17 last year. The only apparent impact has been the employment of a large number of “Participation Officers” whose most valuable contribution is to authorise under age teenagers to continue working in the jobs they have found in spite of the new law.
The Education Dept will tell you the Participation Officers are identifying appropriate TAFE and school courses for their clients. The truth is that the majority of them enrol just to get the bureaucracy off their back and return to their Play Stations, quickly losing any positive work habits they may have developed at school up to Year 10. This enforced break from the requirements of getting up to go to school/work every day is what makes their chance of getting a “better” job disappear over the horizon with its arse on fire.
I find it bemusing that senior politicians are still having difficulty with the way logic works. They still appear to be at the stage of ‘an elephant has four legs; this creature has four legs; therefore it must be an elephant. It can only be this type of confused logic that could convince any one that enforced extension of schooling will improve outcomes for the large number of young people who have already become, or are rapidly becoming, disengaged from education. What is needed is an approach to education that re-engages these youngsters with a quality relevant and appropriate education which prepares them to take a positive working role in the community. This can be done but it is challenging, expensive and almost impossible to devise KPIs for – there isn’t a lot of hope!
However, there are a few schools around the country that are doing just this. A lot of their time and effort is wasted in talking to governments trying to convince them not to reduce funding because the KPI’s don’t stack up.