Education & Employers Research Digest
No images? Click here
Education and Employers
Research Digest - July 2025
Full summaries of all publications contained in the Digest are available by clicking the link embedded titles.
We are always looking to promote the work of others in related fields. To share your publications, conferences, events, or blog posts with our network please email: research@educationandemployers.org
In case you haven’t seen it, our free, searchable online library of research from around the world is available here: Research Library
PUBLICATIONS
The state of global teenage career preparation
OECD
The report shows that across OECD countries, students are now expressing very high levels of career uncertainty and confusion. Job expectations have changed little since 2000 and bear little relationship to actual patterns of labour market demand, including in working areas of high strategic importance. The education plans of students moreover are more strongly shaped by social background than by academic performance.
Summary by Andreas Schleicher
Full Report
Webinar Recording
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz56sR4lwvA
To coincide with the report, the OECD launched a free dashboard which allows users to explore PISA data related to student career plans, participation in career development activities and attitudes towards career development: Teenage Career Readiness | OECD
Dashboard
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/dashboards/teenage-career-readiness.html
The status of youth in agrifood systems
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
This report provides a timely and evidence-based assessment of how decent jobs and food security for youth can be achieved through agrifood systems transformation, and how empowered youth can act as catalysts for broader agrifood systems transformation. Youth need agrifood systems and agrifood systems need youth.
Earning while learning: student employment
L-Earning
The report data drawn from: a) analyses of national datasets of student employment; and b) focus group interviews with 83 young women about their experiences of engaging in paid work whilst studying (‘Earning while Learning’). Participants were aged between 14-23 years old and attending schools, Further Education (FE) colleges, sixth forms, and universities across England. The briefing offers recommendations for employers, businesses and industry representatives to improve the experience of student workers.
Microsoft
The report reveals much about the ongoing evolution of AI in education, from how audiences feel about it to how it’s being used in education today—and how it might be used in the future.
Laying the foundations: how foundation skills shape VET student outcomes
Angus Hughes Zhihui Zhang & Tabatha Griffin
This report explores the relationship between the characteristics and outcomes of learners undertaking foundation skills and how these programs contribute to the training, employment and further study outcomes of learners.
Internships for secondary school students in general education
OECD
This report policy brief reviews data on the impact of such internships on the employment outcomes of young people. It also explores why positive benefits might be expected when provision is of good quality in light of theories of human, social and cultural capital and wider research on the opportunities for learning presented by workplace exposure.
COMMENTS
Innovative financing: A catalyst for success in secondary vocational education and training
Diego Angel-Urdinola & Maurice D. Kugler
We believe no child should be constrained by stereotypes or the expectations of others. We know that if young people hear firsthand about the world of work, they work harder, get better grades and are more likely to break down barriers.
They should have the chance to start as early as possible, and that is why we launched the national I am #InspiringTheFuture campaign.
Any views expressed in the publications featured in this newsletter are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of Education and Employers.
