Education and Employers
Research Digest - November 2025

PUBLICATIONS

Investing in career guidance  (2025)

Joint statement of the Interagency Working Group on Career Guidance

This is a new joint statement from seven international organisations (Cedefop, the European Commission, European Training Foundation, International Labour Organisation, OECD, UNESCO and the World Bank).  Coming in advance of the second Global Careers Month (see below), the statement represents the collective view of the organisations on why it is becoming more important than ever for government to invest effectively in the career development for young people and adults. The short paper describes the characteristics of effective delivery, highlighting the significance of connecting with the world of work. The new publication is an update on the 2021 statement from the organisations and provides a compelling rationale for investment in guidance services.

Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper

Department for Education, UK Government

The paper sets out the plans of the UK government (England) for reforms to the system designed to enhance the skills and employment prospects of young people.  The paper includes details of a new vocational qualification for young people aged over 16 to be taken alongside academic qualifications. It also includes plans for greater clarity in post-16 pathways linked to ‘fulfilling jobs’ in order to reduce youth unemployment. The White Paper which sets out the basis for future legislation in England, includes significant references to career guidance, notably confirmation of expectations that students aged 11-16 will engage in two weeks of work experience placement and activities.  For a discussion of these themes, see the blog by David Morgan, Chief Executive of the Career Development Institute, What does the post-16 education White Paper mean for careers guidance?

The 21st Century Ladz: Continuity and Changes among Marginalised Young Men from the South Wales Valleys

Richard Gater, Cardiff University

In this new book, Richard Gater looks at the attitudes of marginalised working class boys and young men in South Wales towards education, employment and masculinity.   Compared to earlier studies, notably Paul Willis’s Learning to Labour, Gater finds that the “differences in the young men’s attitudes and behaviour are significant, especially in the context of future employment changes and the notion that manual employment, low skilled and poorly educated young men will be negatively affected by increased automation and new technologies. The changes in attitude and behaviour allow us to think about how we could harness and develop them through targeted intervention and a locally-based initiative delivered by trusted community members and organisations to increase educational engagement and consider employment futures other than low-skilled manual employment and increase the life chances of marginalised young men.”  Gater discusses insights from his book in this short article featured in The Conservation website, What work means to working-class young men in an age of increasing automation.

Start Small, Dream Big: Primary Pilot Final evaluation report

ImpactEd

This report for the UK Careers and Enterprise Company sets out the findings of an evaluation of the Start Small, Dream Big programme.  It concludes that career knowledge development requires sustained commitment; CPD participation requires realistic expectations of school capacity; employer encounters make career-related learning (CRL) more meaningful; existing careers hub infrastructure supports primary engagement; and the approach shows potential for long-term change in primary CRL.

Modern Work Experience Guide: Young people, schools, parents and carers, employers

Youthfed and Westminster Foundation

This guide to ‘modern work experience’ being introduced in England builds on extensive practice in Cheshire and Warrington. It provides a definition of modern work experience, includes guidance aimed at enabling employer engagement, advice for young people on how to optimise benefits, for schools on how provision sits within institutional expectations and for parents on how they can best support their children.

Life Satisfaction in Western Europe and the Gradual Vanishing of the U-shape in Age

David G. Blanchflower (Dartmouth College) and Adam Smith (University of Glasgow)

Using Eurobarometer data for 21 Western European countries since 1973, the authors show in this open access paper that the long-standing U-shape in life satisfaction by age (where satisfaction is greatest in young adulthood and older years and dips in middle age) has now vanished. In 13 northern European countries- Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK - the U-shape has been replaced by life satisfaction rising in age.  Findings are confirmed with evidence from the European Social Surveys, the Global Flourishing Survey and Global Minds. The authors identify a collapse in young people’s wellbeing relative to older people.  Evidence of change in the U-shape is mixed for Austria and France. In six southern European countries – Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta, Spain and Portugal - the U-shape was replaced by life satisfaction declining in age. In these southern European countries, life satisfaction of the young has been rising since around 2015. A contributory factor is the rapid decline in youth unemployment from its 2015 peak.  Additional analysis of the OECD PISA data from 2015, 2018 and 2022 for 13 European countries finds that life satisfaction among 15-year-olds has fallen strongly across all the countries.  The greatest fall between 2015 and 2022 is in the UK which in 2022 ranks as the country where students express the lowest levels of life satisfaction.

Qualifications & professionalism in career development

Hannah Blake, Tristram Hooley and Ka Tung Lai (University of Derby)

This report from the International Centre for Guidance Studies for the Career Development Institute explores professional qualifications linked to the training of career guidance professionals in the United Kingdom.  The study draws on 22 stakeholder interviews, a survey of 644 careers professionals, employers, training providers and wider stakeholders and roundtable discussions with 25 further participants to explore how the field should develop.  The study identifies a range of concerns including poor public understanding of the profession, widespread staff shortages contributing to the use of unqualified or underqualified staff and the need for simplification of the qualifications system.  The report includes 12 recommendations for enhancing provision.

Playing the game? Young people ‘at risk’ of becoming NEET (not in education, employment or training) and their investment in education

Katherine Davey, Lisa Russell (both Manchester Metropolitan University), Jo Bishop & Ron Thompson (both University of Huddersfield)

This open access article from the Journal of Youth Studies explores how young people identified as ‘at risk’ of not being integrated into education, employment or training orientate themselves towards the education system in England during their f inal years of school. These years can have long-term consequences for future engagement with the labour market, but not every young person is equally positioned to invest in them. Drawing on  findings from an ethnographic study of 81 young people aged 14– 16 in England who were vulnerable to becoming NEET, the paper argues that Bourdieu’s oft-overlooked concept of ‘illusio’ offers a novel way to understand the complex relationships participants have with their schooling. Comparing the field of education to a ‘game’ helps to think through the ease and difficulty with which young people ‘at risk’ of becoming NEET invest in its ‘stakes’ and unpack their beliefs about whether it is worth ‘playing’ even when they feel out of kilter with its rules. Overall, the paper elucidates the tensions between the young people’s motivations to engage in their schooling and their struggles to enact this engagement in the ways that the education system expects of them.

RESOURCES

Teenage Career Readiness Dashboard

OECD

This new resource from the OECD allows users to access data related to career development from the 2022 round of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which collected information from 790,000 teenagers aged 15-16.  The dashboard includes data from 80 countries.  Users can see the top 10 occupational expectations of girls and boys, how these relate to actual patterns of employment across economies, participation in career development activities (including speaking with a career advisor and attendance at job fairs), career thinking (certainty, career and educational plan alignment and ambition, and attitudes towards the capacity of schools to help them in their career development.  Data can be broken down by gender and socio-economic background and is also comprehensively available for individual countries.

PODCASTS

Career and Life Pathways for Young People in Turbulent Times - A Conversation with Global Experts

Hosted by Tim Logan (Future Learning Design) with Kathleen deLaski (Education Design Lab), Anthony Mann (Critical Transitions) Rosa Moreno-Zutautas (IC3 Institute), Anisa Shaikh, Shira Woolf Cohen (Innovageous).

This new podcast from Future Learning Design focuses on the question: How do we guide our young people in their life and career pathways when we are swimming in the same seas of uncertainty as them?  It looks at the question from a research and practice perspective, drawing on international contributions, focusing particularly on experiences in Canda, Germany and the United States as well as across OECD countries.

Why student career peparation is going wrong?

Hosted by Duncan Crawford (OECD) with Anthony Mann (Critical Transitions)

Part of the OECD’s Top Class podcast series, this 30 minute podcast features an interview with Anthony Mann, lead author of the OECD 2025 report, The state of global teenage career preparation. The podcast discusses the latest PISA data that shows record numbers of 15-year-olds to be uncertain about their job plans, confused about what they need to do to achieve them when they do know what they want to do, and focused on small parts of the labour market.  The discussion highlights how guidance can be improved for young people, especially from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, and why there is an urgent need to do more to help them prepare for their lives in work.

Listen to the podcast: https://soundcloud.com/oecdtopclasspodcast/why-student-career-preparation-is-going-wrong

EVENTS

Global Careers Month

This November sees the second Global Careers Month. An initiative of international organisations including the European Commission, International Labor Organisation, OECD and UNESCO, the month runs from 8 November and 13 December 2022.  The aims of the month are to raise awareness of the critical importance of career guidance, share excellent practice, identify challenges and disseminate research undertaken by the international organisations.  Schools and other organisations are encouraged to put on a special event to coincide with the Month. Events can be registered with the International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance which is capturing activity around the world. For schools in the UK interested in running career speed networking event, Inspiring the Future has a how to guide. Also useful might be the OECD’s short paper on the key factors that maximise the chance of career talks being of long-term value to students.

For more information about Global Careers Month, visit: https://www.skillsforemployment.org/iagevent

The Education and Employers Research Digest is a free monthly newsletter received by over 4,000 people. It combines the latest research, reports and publications worldwide. It also has details of forthcoming conferences and events, calls for evidence, tenders, articles and blogs on careers, skills, jobs and education.  A particular focus is on engagement with employers and people in work to support the career development of children and young people.

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