Ready for the future? Young people’s views on work and careers
Ready for the future? Foreword The question mark in the title of this report is deliberate. We commissioned it not just to find out what the realities of working life are likely to be in the future, but also whether young people are prepared for them. While a lot of work has been undertaken to understand the requirements of employers, surprisingly less effort has been made to appreciate the aspirations and perceptions of the future workforce – today’s young people. The demands on these young people will be high. It is now almost a cliché to say that the future working environment will be one where change and uncertainty are the norm. To succeed in this environment, young people will need not only to cope with such change, but to create opportunities from it. Challenges such as an ageing population and threats to environmental sustainability will require today’s young people to be involved in innovation to a greater degree than ever before. They will need to be much more flexible, resourceful and enterprising in their outlook and behaviours. At the same time, to compete economically in the future, the UK needs to substantially raise its game and produce more innovative products and services. In order to do this, NESTA believes that the focus should be on creating a culture in which innovation can flourish. This calls for a wider set of skills, beyond those traditionally focused on in education, and demands new approaches to teaching and learning. We aim to support this evolution through our Future Innovators programme which, as its name suggests, is dedicated to developing the skills and attitudes needed by young people to navigate the new economy. Future Innovators is not solely focused on schools and colleges. We recognise, and it has been validated in this report, that young people gain a lot of learning through their families, friends and the internet. We are keen to help cultivate this informal learning and enable young people to see how it can be valuable to them in their careers and life. We are aware that we can only achieve our aims through partnerships with others and so we welcome approaches from groups that share our vision and wish to push the boundaries of their work to support education for innovation.
Jonathan Kestenbaum Chief Executive, NESTA
May 2007
Introduction Over the last 18 months, a series of high profile reports have focused attention on how best to compete and prosper in a global economy. Two issues have subsequently risen up the political agenda: the need for a highly skilled workforce and the importance of cultivating an economy built on innovation. ‘Ready for the future?’ connects these two elements – exploring the skills that will be needed to drive innovation in the future. This report also examines the attitudes and aspirations of those who will be shaping the workplaces of the future: young people. Whilst there is a growing evidence-base on the needs of employers, there is surprisingly little information on the perceptions, attitudes and aspirations of young people themselves. Based on a survey of 15 – 16 year olds across the UK, this report goes some way to addressing that. Specifically, it does four things: • It offers a brief account of the (increasing) importance of innovation to economic and social success in the future. • It demonstrates that this points towards a ‘standards plus’ agenda, where higher skills – but also a wider set of skills and personal capabilities – are likely to be required of today’s young people when they reach the workplace. • It explores young people’s attitudes towards work and skills, arguing that they appear to be realists rather than dreamers: they see a tough world that rewards hard work, but seem less aware of the full set of skills and capabilities that are likely to be important in the future. • It identifies key influences on young people, in order to understand how young people’s world views are shaped at present – and where successful interventions might be targeted in the future. The report has been commissioned from Demos by NESTA’s Future Innovators programme, which aims to better equip young people with the skills they need for tomorrow’s world.
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Innovation is important for economic and social success in the future Much has been written about the consequences of globalisation for employees, organisations and national economies – and the evidence suggests that the world is becoming both ‘flatter’ and more ‘spiky’. The American author and The New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, has argued that we are living in a ‘flatter’ world.1 The possibilities created by new technology ensure that competition between nations for jobs and inward investment is much more even than has been the case in the past. One consequence of this is that ‘new’ economies around the world provide new trading partners for UK firms. But a more even playing field and advanced technology also mean that a growing proportion of jobs in the service and ‘knowledge’ sectors can easily be relocated in countries where conditions are more favourable. New markets are emerging, but competition is intensifying. This ‘flattening’ of the world helps explain the rise of new economic powers in the East. China, for example, now hosts 750 multinational R&D centres and boasts a growth rate of 9 per cent over the last decade,2 whilst India’s economy has been growing at around 8 per cent since 2003.3 Friedman’s prognosis is that Europe and the United States can no longer rely on the economic dominance that they have enjoyed in the past. However, the academic Richard Florida points out that innovation remains ‘spiky’ (see figure 1 for a map of patents4). He notes that competition may be intensifying, but certain nations still enjoy significant competitive advantage: the bulk of commercial and scientific innovation still tends to be concentrated in a few nations around the world. A more accurate or rounded picture, then, seems to be that certain nations still hold the advantage even in a global economy. We live in a flat world, but with big spikes.
Figure 1: Map of registered patents, 20055
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Friedman, T. (2005) ‘It’s A Flat World, After All’, The New York Times, April 3. Wilsdon, J. and Keeley, J. (2007) China: The next science superpower? (Demos, London). 3 Bound, K. (2007) India: The Uneven Innovator (Demos, London). 4 Patents are only one measure of innovation, but serve as a useful indicator of success. 5 www.creativeclass.org/acrobat/TheWorldIsSpiky.pdf Last accessed 23.04.07. 2
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Research published by the Department for Trade and Industry identifies maintaining these levels of innovation as a core component of sustained economic success in the long term. It describes three levels of economic competitiveness, in which an ‘innovation-driven’ economy is likely to be the least susceptible to unexpected dips in demand for certain products, or by episodes such as financial crises. Under this model dynamism is, counter-intuitively, the key to stability in a globalised world. More than simply carrying out highly skilled work in the future, the UK needs its businesses to compete by producing more unique and innovative products and services than other nations.6 In short, long-term prosperity relies largely on innovation: as Richard Florida writes, ‘What powers economic growth? It’s not technology – technology is a raw material. What makes human beings unique is one thing – creativity. All else are subsets. Creativity powers economic growth.’7
Three stages of competitiveness: 1. Factor-driven stage: Competitive advantage is based exclusively on endowments of labour and natural resources. This supports only relatively low wages. 2. Investment-driven stage: Competitive advantage is based on producing standard products and services. This supports higher wages, but is susceptible to financial crises and external, sector-specific demand shocks. 3. Innovation-driven stage: Competitive advantage is based on the ability to produce innovative products and services, using the most advanced methods. Innovation beyond the marketplace is also increasingly regarded as key to addressing a number of major social challenges in the UK and further afield.8 As society seeks to address a number of ‘messy problems’ – those which are unbounded in scope, time and resources, and enjoy no clear agreement about what a solution would even look like9 – it is becoming clear that innovation is too important to be understood as something that happens only within organisations, and when inspired by profit. From environmental sustainability to addressing chronic illnesses, a number of important issues require social innovation: new ways of meeting challenges that are resistant to traditional solutions.10 Geoff Mulgan has argued that, ‘Societies advance through innovation every bit as much as economies do’,11 identifying a range of key social innovations, including Wikipedia, the open source encyclopaedia, and new policy ideas, like NHS Direct, that have helped address unmet needs. For social as well as economic reasons, the successful exploitation of new ideas holds the key to societies shaping their own futures.
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Porter, M. and Ketels, C. H.M. (2003) Competitiveness: moving to the next stage (DTI, London). Florida, R. (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class: And How it’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (Basic Books, New York). 8 Mulgan, G. et al. (2006) Social Silicon Valleys: A Manifesto for Social Innovation (Young Foundation, London). 9 Chapman, J. (2002) System Failure: Why Governments Must Learn to Think Differently (Demos, London). 10 Mulgan, G. et al. (2006) Social Silicon Valleys: A Manifesto for Social Innovation (Young Foundation, London). 11 Mulgan, G. (2006) ‘Extreme Makeover’, Society Guardian, April 26. 7
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Skills are only one part of achieving this – but an important part The clustering or concentration of innovation in particular areas suggests the need for a number of factors to come together to produce a critical mass of innovation. Stimulating innovation requires the right combination of governance, incentives, resources, and so on. However, few people disagree that one key ingredient of innovation is a highly skilled workforce. Employers rank having a workforce able to identify, develop and adopt new ideas second only to ‘the right ideas at the right time’ as important factors underpinning innovation.12 The Leitch Review of Skills gave expression to this consensus, finding that, ‘The case for action is compelling and urgent. Becoming a world leader in skills will enable the UK to compete with the best in the world.’13 Projections in a report commissioned for the Leitch Review (see figure 2) suggest that by 2020 fewer than 2 per cent of the workforce and those employed will have no qualifications at all, whilst approaching 50 per cent of the workforce will require qualifications to degree level or higher.
Figure 2: Share of Employment by Qualification 1994-202014 Econometric modelling and political agreement also help explain the concerted effort in recent years to raise standards of achievement among those of school age, through a number of measures including: • significant increases in public spending on education; • reform of delivery systems through the introduction of trust schools, Academies and Specialist Schools; • attempts to raise participation post-16 and post-18; • a drive to ‘personalise’ learning through reform of the 14–19 curriculum and new entitlements. 12
MORI poll, Innovation Survey, carried out on behalf of the CBI and QinetiQ, MORI (2005). Alternative skills scenarios to 2020 for the UK economy: Report to the Leitch Review of Skills, HM Treasury/SSDA, CE/IER (2005). 14 Leitch Review of Skills final report (2006). Sourced from Alternative skills scenarios to 2020 for the UK economy: Report to the Leitch Review of Skills, HM Treasury/SSDA, CE/IER, 2005. 13
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Such efforts have coincided with rises in achievement. Figure 3 demonstrates the rise in achievement at GCSE level, particularly for those achieving 5 A*- Cs over the last decade.
Figure 3: GCSE and equivalent indicators for 15 year old pupils15
People need higher skills but also a wider set of skills and personal capabilities – ‘standards plus’ However, it is about more than just higher skills. Both theory and the evidence available point towards the growing importance of equipping young people with a wider set of skills than have often been valued and prioritised in the past. Public discourse is beginning to reflect the importance of those aptitudes that help young people build strong and positive personal relationships, both in and out of the workplace. The Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit has identified the importance of ‘life skills’, which it defines as ‘personal, learning and thinking skills’, highlighting their role in helping people live healthier, more balanced lives.16 Shifts in the type of employment that people find themselves in, as well as the level of qualification required, imply the need for a broad set of personal capabilities. As the UK economy shifts away from the standardised jobs and processes of the industrial revolution, organisations from all sectors increasingly need people able to work collaboratively, to communicate clearly and to respond effectively to new situations and the shifting demands of clients.
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DfES (2006) GCSE and Equivalent Results and Associated Value-added Measures for Young People in England 2004–2005 (Revised) (DfES, London). 16 Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit (2006) A report on schools: progress in the last ten years and challenges ahead (Cabinet Office, London).
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An indication of the importance of these wider skills and capabilities in the workplace is that many organisations are finding new ways to recruit, which are designed to identify key sets of attitudes and behaviours.17 Research from the United States suggests that whilst employers used to appoint candidates on the basis of 90 per cent experience and 10 per cent attitude, that situation has now changed to around 40 per cent attitude and a series of ‘soft skills’.18 Similarly, analysis from the Institute of Public Policy Research of two large-scale surveys, that followed young people born in 1958 and 1970, has found that in just over a decade, personal and social skills became 33 times more important in determining relative life chances.19 The evidence is also that employers are struggling to find this particular package of skills. Employer skills surveys reveal communication skills, teamworking, customer handling and problem solving to be bigger skills shortages than literacy and numeracy20 – suggesting that emotional intelligence or interpersonal skills are taking on greater importance in all walks of life. In fact, some organisations are moving away from traditional skill-sets entirely. Leading-edge ‘techy’ organisations are tapping into the skills developed by a generation that has grown up with Nintendos, Xboxes and, more recently, online multiplayer games. To be an effective World of Warcraft guild master, one needs to be adept at many skills: attracting, evaluating and recruiting new members; creating apprenticeship programmes; orchestrating group strategy; and managing disputes.21 All of these skills are readily welcomed in the modern workplace, and they are set to become even more valuable. Although these organisations are cutting-edge, their recruitment strategies could point towards a growing trend for the future.
Figure 4: Skills gaps and skills shortage vacancies (2004)22
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Gallagher, N. and O’Leary, D. (2007) Recruitment 2020: How Recruitment is Changing and Why it Matters (Demos, London). 18 Moss, P. and Tilly, C. (1996) Soft skills and race: an investigation of black men’s employment problems (Russell Sage Foundation, New York). 19 Margo, J. et al. (2006) Freedom’s Orphans: Raising Youth in a Changing World (ippr, London). 20 Learning and Skills Council (2005) National Employers Skills Survey 2004 (LSC, London). 21 Seely Brown, J. and Thomas, D. (2006) “You play World of Warcraft? You’re hired!”, Why multiplayer games may be the best kind of job training, Wired, 14 April. 22 Source: Learning and Skills Council (2005) National Employers Skills Survey 2004 (LSC, London).
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These attitudes and behaviours can be linked to the capacity to innovate: as NESTA has argued, innovation is best understood as a ‘contact sport’ – something which is more likely to take place through interaction between people rather than as a result of ‘eureka’ moments for isolated individuals.23 FTSE 200 companies rank ‘creativity and innovation’ as the most important skill for graduates in 10 years’ time, above literacy, numeracy and IT capability,24 indicating a belief that the Government’s concern for a creative workforce in the future25 is shared by employers. But more than this, the evidence suggests that people require the full range of interpersonal skills to activate or make the best of their abilities in practice. In this way, new evidence, new theory and new demands on people, both in and out of the workplace, all suggest that the emphasis over the last decade on raising standards in the key areas of literacy, numeracy and technical know-how needs to be complemented by efforts to develop the key attributes that support innovation. A higher level of skills looks set to be non-negotiable for the current generation of young people in their adult lives – but the wider set of skills required for personal and professional success also needs to be nurtured at school age. In short, the evidence suggests that ‘standards’ needs to become ‘standards plus’.
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NESTA (2007) Innovation in UK Cities, NESTA Policy Briefing (NESTA, London). Gillinson, S. and O’Leary, D. (2006) Working Progress: How to reconnect organisations and young people (Demos, London). 25 Cox Review of Creativity in Businesss: building on the UK’s strengths (2006) (HMSO, London). 24
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Young people understand the importance of ‘standards’ The results of a survey commissioned for this report suggest that young people are under no illusions about the level of competition awaiting them in their working lives. Contrary to the popular depiction of young people as dreamers, the evidence indicates a more grounded and pragmatic worldview. Just under 70 per cent believe that it will be ‘hard’ or ‘very hard’ to find the job they want to do in adult life. Despite the (sustained) low levels of unemployment and rising living standards enjoyed in the UK26 at present, and the opportunities that the integration of the global economy present for the future, young people anticipate a competitive working world.
Figure 5: Young people’s views on how easy it is to find the job they want27 Though young people see a competitive world ahead of them, the evidence also suggests that they anticipate a relatively fair one. Data from a longitudinal study conducted by the Department for Education and Skills, looking into young people’s attitudes, indicates a common belief that, broadly, people get what they deserve from life: • Over 90 per cent agree (either ‘agree’ or ‘agree strongly’) that if you work hard at something, you’ll usually succeed. • 70 per cent disagree with the idea that getting on in the world is mostly a matter of luck. • A small number (9 per cent) agree that ‘people like me don’t have much of a chance in life’.28 Whilst, in practice, life chances remain unequal for young people from different backgrounds,29 it appears that they anticipate working in a tough, but relatively meritocratic world, in which they make their own luck. This emphasis on a work ethic, and the importance of self-improvement, is reflected in the finding that young people are also clear that schoolwork is a worthwhile activity. As figure 6 indicates, over 90 per cent ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that schoolwork is worth doing. 26
Brewer, M. et al. (2005) Living Standards, Inequality and Poverty (Institute for Fiscal Studies, London). From a survey commissioned for this study. 28 Next Steps: Young People's Lives Today. Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, Department for Education and Skills (2004). 29 Bamfield, L. and Brooks, R. (2006) Narrowing the Gap: Final report of the Fabian Commission on Life Chances (Fabian Society, London). 27
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Figure 6: Young people’s attitudes to schoolwork30 And in line with this sense of pragmatism, it appears that the focus of young people during their time at school is on gaining qualifications that will be useful later in life. In our survey, young people identified qualifications as the most important factor in getting the job that they want in adult life (see figure 7), whilst the DfES data indicates that the most popular reason for staying on at school or college at 16 is to get qualifications (28 per cent), followed by ‘to get a better job/career’ (20 per cent).31
Figure 7: Young people’s views on the most important factors in getting a job in adult life32
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Next Steps: Young People's Lives Today. Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, Department for Education and Skills (2004). 31 Ibid. 32 From a survey commissioned for this study.
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A picture emerges of young people as realists rather than dreamers: they think life will be tough; they believe you get what you deserve; they value hard work; and they recognise the importance of staying at school to get qualifications.
Young people are less aware of ‘standards plus’: the full set of skills required to succeed in the modern workplace and drive the economy Young people’s emphasis on the value of hard work and academic achievement offers a sound basis for success in the future. But they have yet to grasp the importance of a wider set of skills – ‘standards plus’. They seem less aware of the need to develop many of the interpersonal and creative skills, and levels of creativity, described previously. In our survey, young people were asked to identify the three personal qualities that they felt would help them find a job in adult life. They opted for hardworking over four times as often as creative, with reliable selected more than three times as often as creative. Comparisons between the competencies that young people think that they learn at school, and those that they regard as important to succeed, are also telling. A higher percentage of young people believe they learn creativity at school than believe it is actually an important skill to learn. A similar pattern emerges with young people’s views on the value of being resourceful. Despite the continued demand from employers for people capable of problem solving, resourcefulness again scores higher among young people as something that they learn at school, rather than as something that they expect to be important in the working world.
Figure 8: Young people’s views on the personal qualities needed to find a job in adult life But it is not just about the skills that young people expect to use in the future. When asked to evaluate their own characteristics at present, young people believe themselves to be hardworking, reliable and determined above all else. Again, these represent important personal capabilities that will be vital in adult life. But the lower scores for being a good communicator, being resourceful and being creative indicate that young people themselves identify a number of the same weaknesses that emerge from employer surveys. This is another important area that requires further investigation. 11
Figure 9: Young people’s views on the top three qualities that currently characterise the way they approach their schoolwork The findings here are not conclusive – nor is the analysis intended to undermine the value of hard work – but the evidence suggests that the creative skills that will be necessary to drive innovation in the future appear to be undervalued by young people. The recognition of the importance of a work ethic, described in the last section, needs to be complemented by an appreciation of the value of creativity. Young people seem unaware of the importance of a number of the skills and capabilities linked to innovation. This starts to explain why employers consistently complain that young people enter the working world without the full wider set of skills required to succeed. A study by the Edge Foundation, for example, found that 67 per cent of employers thought schools were not equipping young people with skills such as teamworking, communication and time keeping – and that 71 per cent would consider hiring young people with a poor academic record but a lot of work experience.33 Similarly, a survey of 20,000 employers for Scottish Enterprise is clear about those skills lacking in new employees. It found the largest skill shortage to be communication skills (57 per cent), followed by customer handling (52 per cent), problem solving (50 per cent) and teamworking skills (43 per cent). In contrast, literacy and numeracy ranked much lower as skills gaps, with 29 per cent and 24 per cent respectively.34 An important output of innovation is enterprise – whether through social enterprises like Fairtrade coffee products, or new businesses geared towards profit. As the Small Business Service argues, ‘Although in terms of enterprise the UK is doing better than most of our European and G7 counterparts, we still need to develop our enterprise culture further to match the high levels of enterprise in the US and Canada.’35 33
‘School “doesn’t prepare pupils for work”’, Education Guardian, 19 December 2005. Hall Aitken (2003) Demand for Skills and Training in the Scottish Borders: The employers’ view (Scottish Enterprise Borders, Galashiels). 35 www.sbs.gov.uk/SBS_Gov_files/researchandstats/HouseholdSurveyOfEntrepreneurship05FullReport.pdf Last accessed 23.04.07. 34
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Only a small number (four per cent) of the young people in our survey definitely plan to start their own business or charity. This compares unfavourably to a current national figure of 13.1 per cent of the population of England aged 16 – 64 being self-employed or business owners36. Again, awareness is a key issue here. Forty-three per cent of the young people involved in our survey have not even thought about the idea, indicating both a problem and an opportunity for those seeking to create a more enterprising generation of young people.
Figure 10: Young people’s views on starting their own business or charity Conveying the importance of ‘standards plus’ to young people, therefore, appears to be a major challenge for the future. If young people are to develop the full range of skills and capabilities to help them succeed in adult life – and understand the full range of options available to them – then awareness-raising will be crucial. This report has identified a number of key influences for young people, which together could contribute to raising their levels of awareness of the wider skill-set needed.
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www.sbs.gov.uk/SBS_Gov_files/researchandstats/HouseholdSurveyOfEntrepreneurship05FullReport.pdf Last accessed 23.04.07.
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How do we do this? School system Unsurprisingly, the school system emerges as one key influence. The value that young people place on qualifications – they are their key motivation for staying on at school – indicates that the content and style of qualifications sends an important message to young people as to what truly matters in adult life. Qualifications, after all, are intended to qualify you for something. Demos research in 2006 found that 91 per cent of graduates considered themselves to be well prepared for working life – in stark contrast to the views of FTSE 200 companies (or their equivalents in the public sector), who reported that it was harder than ever to find the right graduates with the right skills.37 That such a large proportion of graduates should consider themselves to be well-prepared for the workplace is in some ways predictable: graduates have, by definition, overcome all the hurdles in front of them during their educational career. Yet the disconnect between the views of graduates and of their employers implies an information failure – that young people need a wider set of skills, but seem to be unaware of this. Qualifications also serve as an important means to hold schools to account – performance in an increasingly competitive market for schooling is judged (and published in league tables) by the number of grades at different levels. It is vital, in this context, that qualifications reflect the key skills required in adult life, to ensure that they send the right messages to young people and set the right incentives for teachers and schools. This focus on standards has driven a period of unparalleled success and achievement in schools: the number of students achieving 5 A*–C grades (including English and Maths) at GCSE has increased from 35.2 per cent in 1996 to 44.9 per cent in 2005 and the number of young people going to university has risen to above 40 per cent. But this exclusive focus has led Geoff Mulgan to suggest that ‘government policies have emphasised what’s measurable rather than what’s important’.38 The school system needs to find ways to develop a parallel set of skills alongside traditional competencies. The recent Roberts Report, ‘Nurturing Creativity in Young People,’39 offers one way to do this, recommending that every young person should be given the opportunity to build up a creative portfolio alongside more traditional forms of assessment. The portfolio would be a resource for students who are achieving in different spheres, to capture and share their work with friends, family, potential employers and higher education institutions. The introduction of a creative portfolio would be a first step in building up an alternative framework, within the school system, for young people to assess themselves against; a framework that gets beyond standards and moves towards the ‘standards plus’ agenda. Linked to qualifications is the importance of teaching styles that encourage the development of the skills of ‘standards plus’. Crucial here is the importance of overcoming the false and damaging distinction between learning knowledge and learning skills. Tom Bentley demonstrates the ways in which teaching styles need to adapt to find ways of helping young people learn knowledge and skills 37
Gillinson, S. and O’Leary, D. (2006) Working Progress: How to reconnect organisations and young people (Demos, London). 38 Mulgan, G. (2005) Learning to Serve: the toughest skills challenges for public services and government and what can be done about it (LSDA, London). 39 www.culture.gov.uk/Reference_library/Publications/archive_2006/nurturing_creativity.htm Last accessed 23.04.07.
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simultaneously, arguing, ‘It is impossible to develop or demonstrate emotional intelligence in the absence of some other question or issue. One cannot work in a team for its own sake.’40 At a classroom level, this could be as simple as introducing methods of learning that explicitly value ‘standards plus’ skills. Collaborating online has become second nature for young people playing international multiplayer online games, but this willingness to work together rarely extends to schoolwork, where notions of cheating and emphasis on individual achievement still dominate. Almost all young people use Wikipedia, but teachers have been slow to react to the potential of this collaborative software. Collaborative projects, dependent on students contributing, editing and reflecting on each other’s work, could be integrated across the curriculum from art to science. This type of learning would motivate young people to develop the kind of skills that will be highly valued in the workplace. Finding opportunities to partner with organisations in the community offers another route to involving young people in projects that cut across traditional silos in the curriculum, allowing them to develop creativity and interpersonal skills alongside the traditional academic curriculum. Demos has argued in the past for an ‘Investors in Community’ accreditation to encourage businesses to get involved in schemes and activities that support these kinds of learning opportunities.41 And the skills and capacities of teachers themselves matter. The recruitment strategy for Teach First, an independent charity founded to encourage top graduates to enter teaching, is designed to encourage a new generation of teachers who embody and value just these ‘standards plus’ skills. Any application to Teach First is assessed against the following criteria: communication skills, humility, respect and empathy, initiative and creativity, knowledge, leadership and personal responsibility, problem solving, resilience, self-evaluation and teamwork. In order to encourage these skills in their students, it is imperative that teachers themselves value and promote them.
Parents Formal education is clearly an important influence on school, but there is a danger of confusing schooling with learning, when we know that young people learn – and are influenced – in a range of other contexts. This helps explain why the young people involved in our survey identified ‘parents and family’ (39 per cent) ahead of school (37 per cent) when asked who or where they learned the most from. Parents themselves also recognise the influence of families on children’s learning. In a recent Demos poll, parents were asked to rank seven ways of learning, in order of importance, for their child.42 Only half of all parents selected ‘classroom learning’ as their first choice, with 20 per cent prioritising the social experiences of ‘sharing a family meal’ or ‘playing with friends’. This reflects research by Charles Desforges of the University of Exeter, which found that parenting has four or five times more impact on educational outcomes than schooling among children of primary school age, and that parenting accounts for a quarter of the attainment of top-scoring children at the age of sixteen.43 Today’s parents put more time, effort and thought into their relationship with their children than previous generations and this is manifested in a number of ways. Over the last two decades, the amount of time that working mothers have spent with their children has increased from less than 40 minutes per day, in 1974–5, to over 90 minutes, in 1999. In fact, working mothers spend more time 40
Bentley, T. (1998) Learning Beyond the Classroom: Education for a changing world (Routledge/Demos, London). 41 Gillinson, S. and O’Leary, D. (2006) Working Progress: How to reconnect organisations and young people (Demos, London). 42 Green, H. and Hannon, C. (2007) Their Space: education for a digital generation (Demos, London). 43 Desforges, C. (2003) The Impact of Parental Involvement, Parental Support and Family Education on Pupil Achievements and Adjustment: a Literature Review (DfES, London).
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with their children now than non-working mothers did in 1981.44 Parents are also increasingly concerned with obtaining the best information and care for their child, and providing them with the best education opportunities. As Madeleine Bunting argues, ‘Parents feel a greater sense of responsibility for supporting their children’s education and development; it’s not just work which has intensified, but many aspects of child raising too.’45 This development has been referred to as the ‘professionalisation of parenting’.46 It then comes as no surprise that over two-thirds (68 per cent) of parents are extremely worried about their children’s future and well-being. Older parents are less anxious about their children’s future than younger parents. Seventy-three per cent of parents under 35 agree that they are very worried about their children’s future – in comparison to 65 per cent of parents over 35.47 However, in many cases they are unsure about how to engage with the education system, especially at secondary school level, or about how best to support their children’s learning. Recent government policy has tried to address this by making the role of parents in schools much more explicit. The Prime Minister declared, in his introduction to the Government’s White Paper on Education, that he wished to ‘put parents in the driving seat for change’.48 In practice, this means giving parents a bigger say in the running of schools, through parents’ councils and the right to demand regular information on their child’s progress.49 This also matches what parents say they want – in a recent study50 in England, 72 per cent of parents said they wanted more involvement in their child’s education. Schools already recognise the importance of parental influence on young people’s learning, and are engaging parents in different ways in order to strengthen this relationship. Some schools are preparing to allow parents to check their child’s attendance and attainment records through web portals, while others are hosting ‘cultural exchange evenings’ to encourage parents to feel part of a wider school community. This relationship-building is vital, but needs to be matched by capacitybuilding with parents to help them understand – and communicate to young people – the importance of the full range of skills that will be valuable to them in adult life. If young people are really going to recognise the importance of a ‘standards plus’ agenda, then parents need to be part of the coalition to make that happen.
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Fisher, K., McCulloch, A. and Gershuny, J. (1999) British fathers and children: a report for Channel 4 “Dispatches”. University of Essex, Institute of Social and Economic Research, quoted in Bunting, M. (2004) Willing Slaves (Harper Collins, London). 45 Bunting, M. (2004) Willing Slaves (Harper Collins, London). 46 Future Foundation (2006) The Changing Face of Parenting: Professional Parenting, Information and Healthcare (Future Foundation, London). 47 Ibid. 48 Quoted in ‘Parents and Schools in Partnership: The White Paper’, Human Scale Education News, Winter 2005. 49 Ibid. 50 From a speech by Alan Johnson in March 2007.
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The Internet The internet is also reported as somewhere young people learn from – with 15 per cent of the young people in our survey citing the web as where they learned the most from, compared to just two per cent choosing books. A generation of ‘digital natives’ appears to be influenced not just in the home – but through the home computer. For most young people, technology is part of their daily lives. By the age of 21 the average person will have spent 15,000 hours in formal education, 20,000 hours in front of the TV and a staggering 50,000 hours in front of a computer screen.51 But contrary to popular myth, this is not all game playing and aimless surfing; young people are actively connecting, exchanging and creating in new ways. As we have charted throughout this report, the young people that we surveyed do not appear to value the expression of creativity as an important part of their formal learning experience. This is perhaps surprising given the creativity expressed in their private lives. Teenagers today can do all sorts of things that teenagers 10 years ago could not even have imagined. As software and hardware have simultaneously become cheaper and easier to use, this generation is burning self-shot home movies, composing and recording music, and editing and uploading photos. There is nothing new about young people being creative and expressive – you certainly do not need a computer to paint your bedroom or decide what clothes to wear. The difference is that, by digitising their efforts, young people are now sharing the fruits of their labour with a worldwide audience. They are posting videos on YouTube and Google Video, uploading photos to Flickr and linking back to their friends on MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. Research in the US shows that 35 per cent of adult internet users have created content and posted it online, compared to 57 per cent of teenager internet users. Thirty-three per cent of these teenagers share their creations online: through artwork, photos, stories and videos.52 Finding ways to support and reflect this shift in behaviour seems an important way of tapping into the interests and mode of operating for many young people. But rather than harnessing the technologies that are fully integrated into young people’s daily lives, the temptation for schools is a ‘battening down the hatches’ approach. Responding to concerns about the safety of social networking sites, most schools block MySpace, YouTube and Bebo. Mobiles, iPods and other pieces of equipment are largely unwelcome in the classroom. Similarly, parents are plagued by fears of internet stalkers and access to inappropriate content, which make them far more likely to think twice before leaving a teenager alone with an internet connection. While these media narratives undoubtedly have very real concerns at their heart, the hyperbole obscures anything of real value in what young people are learning through digital technologies. A recent Demos report recommended that schools take more seriously their responsibility to bridge the gap between learning that is happening outside school and learning inside the classroom.53 It argued that school should be ‘a place where young people can reflect on the learning that they are doing outside the classroom’ and articulate the skills that they are developing that would then enable them to develop and transfer them to other contexts. From creativity, collaboration and communication to persistence, risk-taking and problem solving, young people are developing a raft of skills that will be crucial for their success in working life.
51
Futures of Learning Seminars, Future Learning Practice; seminar report June 2005 (quoted in Green, H. et al. (2005) Personalisation and Digital Technologies (Futurelab, Bristol). 52 Amanda Lenhart, Pew (2006) Presentation, ‘User-Generated Content’, http://www.pewinternet.org/topics.asp?c=1 Last accessed 23.04.07. 53 Green, H. and Hannon, C. (2006) Their Space: education for a digital generation (Demos, London).
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In particular, an important role for schools could be to equip young people to approach the internet in a more critical or reflective fashion. As reported in the Financial Times, Sandra Gisin, who oversees knowledge and information management at the reinsurance giant Swiss Re, said that although colleagues marvel at the speed at which young workers communicate and gather information, they also have a tendency to uncritically accept the top results from a Google search. Sandra explained that Swiss Re will be training workers in how to evaluate, question and prioritise information.54 Finding ways to harness and build upon many of the advanced and exciting ways that young people already learn and are influenced by the internet, then, looks to be an important area for exploration in the coming years.
Personal interests Personal interests also figure highly in the decisions made by young people about what to learn. DfES research shows that the most popular reason young people give for choosing to continue subjects is that they find them interesting – ahead of judgements as to whether they will succeed in them, or whether they will be needed for a particular job. Young people appear to be pragmatic about the need to gain qualifications, but prepared to follow their interests as to exactly what to study.55 This is not surprising given what we know about what drives and motivates people: self-motivation, ownership of an idea or an output, and purposeful context-based learning. The importance of personal interests also became clear in our survey when young people were asked about their hopes for their future career. Finding an interesting job outscored finding a well-paid or reliable one (something not reflected in parents’ hopes for their children, which place more of an emphasis on job security).56 Young people, of course, do not yet have mortgages or tuition fees to pay off – but the emphasis on finding interesting work does offer another insight into the values and motivations of young people at present.
Figure 11: Parents and young people’s hopes for their future careers57 54
Rainie L, ‘They are the future – and they’re coming to a workplace near you’ Financial Times, 19 September 2006. 55
Next Steps: Young People's Lives Today. Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, Department for Education and Skills (2004). 56
Future Foundation (2004) Paradoxical parenting (Future Foundation, London). Future Foundation (2004) Paradoxical parenting (Future Foundation, London) and survey commissioned for this study. 57
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However, finding ways to follow and develop the interests and enthusiasms of young people is often a challenge within the current education system. Over the past decade, we have seen major investment in public services, but also a wholesale shift in how we see delivery. Recent debates about public service reform have centred on the need to ‘personalise services’: to start with the needs of service users, and design services around them. For most practitioners the concept of personalisation, or person-centred support, is not new. However, what is new is the political commitment to create an education system driven by personalisation, where teachers are supported rather than thwarted in their attempts to harness the interests and motivations of young people, as part of their efforts to engage young people fully in their learning. This political rhetoric is an important part of the puzzle, but schools still find it difficult, in reality, to build on the enthusiasm and interests of individual students. Pioneering and innovative schools have introduced various initiatives, from half-termly questionnaires charting students’ hobbies to student reviews of lessons. However, it seems that this is an area that still has much untapped potential. Finding ways to help young people develop the skills associated with ‘standards plus’ will require imagination – and innovation in itself – to ensure that young people are enthused by, rather than simply directed towards, new and different forms of learning.
Careers services Finally, given the disparity between the likely demands and opportunities available in the future, careers services offer another area for exploration. All young people who are in full-time education at school are entitled to free careers education, information and guidance and the finding that 43 per cent have never even thought about starting their own business or charity suggests that starting your own enterprise or charitable venture should be covered better in careers guidance. Given what we know about how young people learn and who they learn from, part of the answer to broadening young people’s horizons and aspirations may lie in encouraging a stronger and broader set of relationships across age groups and experience, both in and out of school. When young people talk about learning and developing skills outside school, they often refer to the central role played by their friends or siblings, particularly using digital tools to get engaged and make unexpected connections. Some schools are already experimenting with peer-to-peer mentoring relationships for particular groups, often of disengaged young people, but this could be taken further. Careers Scotland runs a targeted project called ‘Activate’, which is aimed at young people who would benefit from additional support to develop their employability skills – skills which would help them make a smooth transition from school into a positive post-school opportunity. It focuses on developing employability skills, and pupils work on personal development, career planning and career management while undertaking a variety of enterprise activities such as team-building days, college visits, employer visits and fundraising. Mentoring is also a major aspect of Activate and members meet on a one-to-one basis with their Activate Adviser during school and for one year after completing the programme. Although this is a targeted programme, it offers an interesting model for how the careers service could develop. For example, it could consider working with charities like the Horse’s Mouth, which offers a website that connects teenagers and young people in need of support and advice with other young (and older) people willing to volunteer their time online. This would be another mechanism for opening up young people to a broader appreciation of the skills they will need in the future, and a way of developing those skills.
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Conclusion The findings from this report are neither comprehensive nor apocalyptic. The evidence suggests that young people see value in school and schooling – and understand the need to work hard to achieve their goals. However, to drive innovation in the future, a wider set of skills needs to be developed to supplement the traditional ‘standards’ agenda. ‘Standards’ needs to become ‘standards plus’. ‘Standards plus’ argues that learning skills can – and should – complement learning knowledge. As the Government’s Strategy Unit argues, ‘Schools need to develop these [life] skills alongside, and as part of, the teaching of literacy, numeracy and traditional academic subjects.’58 Young people with strong emotional intelligence and high levels of creativity should be more likely, rather than less, to achieve excellent levels of literacy and numeracy. Life skills and learning cannot be easily separated. Similarly, learning outside the classroom – in the home, in the community, on the internet – also needs to complement what takes place within the school gates. As Charles Leadbeater has written, the danger is that we see social outcomes (such as learning) as goods that are created in – and by – institutions, rather than in partnership with them.59 If young people are to fully grasp the importance of these skills – and benefit from opportunities to develop them – then all those around them, from policymakers to teachers, careers advisers and parents, will need to play their part.
58
Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit (2006) A report on schools: progress in the last ten years and challenges ahead (Cabinet Office, London). 59 Leadbeater, C. (2006) ‘Production by the Masses’: Production Values: Futures for Professionalism (Demos, London).
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NESTA and UK innovation NESTA is the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. With endowed funds of over £300 million, our mission is to transform the UK’s capacity for innovation. We do this in three main ways: by working to build a more pervasive culture of innovation in this country; by providing innovators with access to early-stage capital; and by driving forward research into innovation, with a view to influencing policy. For more information go to: www.nesta.org.uk
NESTA Future Innovators NESTA runs a number of programmes to help innovation flourish in the UK, by finding the best ways to stimulate curiosity, creativity, inventiveness and enterprise. NESTA’s Future Innovators programme is one of these, aiming to develop the skills and attitudes needed by young people for the future economy. We do this by supporting the professionals and institutions that work with young people, to test new approaches and disseminate ideas and resources about education for innovation. For more information visit: www.nesta.org.uk/futureinnovators
Demos Demos is one of the UK’s most influential think-tanks. Our research focuses on six areas: cities, culture, public services, science, global security, and families and care. We analyse social and political change, which we connect to innovation and learning in organisations. As an independent voice, we can create debates that lead to real change. We use the media, public events, workshops and publications to communicate our ideas. All our publications can be downloaded free at: www.demos.co.uk
Methodology This report has been compiled from a review of relevant literature and previous surveys commissioned by Demos and others. It also includes an analysis of a survey commissioned for this report from GfK NOP in March 2007 with more than 300 15-16 year olds across the UK.
The Authors Duncan O’Leary is a researcher at Demos. Hannah Green is head of the Families and Care Programme at Demos.
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NESTA and UK innovation – the wider picture NESTA is the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. With endowed funds of over £300 million, our mission is to transform the UK’s capacity for innovation. We do this in three main ways: by working to build a more pervasive culture of innovation in this country; by providing innovators with access to early-stage capital; and by driving forward research into innovation, with a view to influencing policy. We run a number of programmes to help innovation to flourish in the UK by finding the best ways to stimulate curiosity, creativity, inventiveness and enterprise. Future Innovators is one of these, with a specific focus on young people up to 19 in both formal and informal education. For more information on NESTA Future Innovators, please visit www.nesta.org.uk/futureinnovators or email futureinnovators@nesta.org.uk
Demos Demos is one of the UK’s most influential think-tanks. Our research focuses on six areas: cities, culture, public services, science, global security and families and care. We analyse social and political change, which we connect to innovation and learning in organizations. As an independent voice, we can create debates that lead to real change. We use the media, public events, workshops and publications to communicate our ideas. All our publications can be downloaded free at www.demos.co.uk
1 Plough Place, London EC4A 1DE www.nesta.org.uk Telephone 020 7438 2500 We also have offices in Cardiff, Belfast, Stirling, Dundee and Newcastle-upon-Tyne National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts Published April 2007