Challenging Social Inequality Through Career Guidance

6. Conclusion: addressing social inequalities through career development

Abstract

This chapter briefly summarises the paper’s conclusions. It highlights the main findings from new analysis of OECD PIAAC data and PISA data related to the role that social inequalities play both in shaping early labour market outcomes of comparatively educated young adults and in influencing engagement in teenage career development. The chapter concludes by highlighting forms of practice that can be expected to respond effectively to social inequalities and priorities for future research in the field.

The subject of this paper is the delivery of career education and guidance for young people in primary and particularly secondary education in the context of structural, societal inequalities. The paper first seeks to establish whether and how social inequalities can be seen to shape the employment outcomes of young adults. It does so by focusing on three primary aspects of inequality where international data on labour market outcomes is particularly strong due to the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The PIAAC datasets allows analysis of the role that social and economic background, gender and migrant status play in shaping the economic success of young adults with comparable skills (as revealed by the PIAAC reading assessment) and similar levels of academic qualifications. By comparing the experiences of young adults demonstrating comparable levels of human capital, the force of social inequalities is revealed. In this approach, the paper also draws upon insights from non-OECD labour market analyses linked to sexuality, gender identity and ethnicity.

The PIAAC analysis finds that the social and economic status (SES), gender and migrant background of young adults of comparable academic achievement does significantly shape their employment outcomes in consistent ways. Young adults from low SES backgrounds, young women and foreign-born young people can all expect to experience disadvantage in terms of participation in education, employment and training (i.e., effective unemployment), earnings and disadvantageous patterns of occupational segmentation in comparison to more advantaged peer groups.

In light of these findings, the objective of the paper is to identify practical means by which education systems can harness guidance interventions to respond to such inequalities. The paper approaches this task by drawing on capitals analysis – a means of conceptualising factors that shape success in the world of work. Students of labour markets commonly turn to assessments of the human, social and cultural of individuals to understand relative success in the labour market. Relationships are observed between vocational success and the level and character of qualifications and experience that potential workers possess (human capital), the availability of social contacts who can directly or indirectly facilitate access to employment (social capital) and the attitudes, assumptions and personal confidence which influence an individual’s ability to successfully enter and thrive within different employment fields (cultural capital).

Career guidance systems have important parts to play in developing the human, social and cultural capital of students as they progress through education and into employment. Effective guidance systems are designed to help students make good study choices and to gain work-related experience while still in education (human capital), to develop relations with people in work well placed to provide authentic and useful advice and other forms of support linked to vocational ambitions (social capital) and to ensure that young people leave education with a confident understanding of themselves, their career ambitions and what they need to do in order to achieve them within an emerging sense of vocational identity (cultural capital). In essence, effective guidance systems will provide students with the support they need to accumulate resources that will enable progression towards fulfilling employment and equip them, notably through direct engagements with the world of work, with social contacts, vocational knowledge and personal confidence to successfully activate their human capital in the labour market after leaving education (Brown, Hooley and Wond, 2020[1]; Jones, Mann and Morris, 2016[2]; Stanley and Mann, 2014[3]; Tomlinson et al., 2022[4]; 2013[5]).

This paper does not suggest that reform of guidance systems will remove inequalities within the labour market (as noted in chapter four for example, evidence of discrimination within recruitment is plentiful), but that guidance systems if strategically designed, in light of the best available evidence, will be better placed to respond productively to the challenge by addressing predictable barriers preventing confident career development and progression. The scale of the challenge is considerable. As analysis of PISA 2018 shows for example, high achieving OECD students from high SES backgrounds are twice as likely at the age of 15 as their high achieving peers from low SES backgrounds to express an intention to pursue tertiary education (Mann et al., 2020[6]). The dataset also shows that boys are six times more likely to plan on pursuing a profession in the skilled trades (ISCO major category 7) than girls. In only five OECD countries is it possible to identify meaningful numbers of students from migrant backgrounds who plan on working in the same field (Mann, Denis and Percy, 2020[7]).

In this light, it would be hoped that guidance systems would recognise the additional barriers preventing coherent groups within society from achieving their career ambitions. Analysis of OECD 2018 PISA data shows that this is often not the case. Looking across data from available OECD countries, it is evident that students from low SES backgrounds routinely engage less frequently in career development activities than their high SES peers. This is a particular concern as low SES students can be expected to leave education earlier than high SES students, demonstrating a more urgent need for effective guidance. Female students also face important disadvantages, in comparison to boys, in accessing career development opportunities within school. On average, they are much less likely to participate in those guidance activities that are most strong linked in longitudinal research with better adult employment outcomes: activities that engage them directly with employers and people in work, such as job shadowing, workplace visits, job fairs and internships. In some countries, young people from migrant backgrounds can also be seen to face patterns of disadvantage in accessing career development activities, but here the extent of disadvantage tends to be weaker.

In light of analysis from PIAAC, PISA and related datasets, the paper argues that guidance systems should respond to inequalities by addressing predictable additional barriers that can prevent student development of career-related human, social and cultural capital while in education in four primary ways – with examples of practice from multiple countries illustrating potential approaches. Effective systems will acknowledge the existence of additional barriers which hinder some students from successfully accumulating and activating human capital in the labour market. A first approach to addressing inequalities is through providing more intense support to address the needs of coherent groups of students. Existing analysis from PISA 2018 shows that in many jurisdictions, such students are less likely than comparatively more advantaged peers to access such provision. In PISA 2022, for the first time, details are available from all participating countries and economic areas on how current participation rates in career development activities vary by SES, gender and migrant status. In response, countries have funded targeted provision to enhance guidance received by comparatively disadvantaged groups. A notable example is from Ireland, where the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools programme ensures that schools based in areas characterised by greater levels of poverty and refugees receive twice the funding as schools in more advantaged areas to support guidance activities (OECD, 2023[8]).

Secondly, it is argued that there is need to develop the professional capacity of the guidance workforce and provide dedicated resources to enhance provision. In many countries, inequality is addressed to only a very limited extent within professional training programmes and opportunity exists to enhance the informed confidence of guidance practitioners in understanding and responding to the consequences of inequalities hampering the career development of young people. The BREAK! Project developed in Estonia, Iceland and Lithuania (and funded by the European Union) for example, provides counsellors with tools and approaches to help students make sense of, and respond to, gender inequalities within the labour market (Kinkar et al., 2019[9]).

Thirdly, the papers recommends that guidance systems work to build the social capital of groups facing disadvantage. Examples include programmes to help female students engage with women working in professions linked to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and to facilitate connections between students from refugee backgrounds with working people and employers (Jeon, 2019[10]). Finally, the paper argues that it is essential for guidance systems to encourage and enable students to develop a critical understanding of their personal relationships with the labour market. In situations where patterns of inequality may be oblique and concerns over the potential hostility of workplaces reasonable, it is important for students to be helped to make sense of the patterns of disadvantage witnessed. As longitudinal studies of critical consciousness illustrate (Diemer, 2009[11]), students who understand that social inequalities may be to their personal disadvantage and demonstrate some commitment to challenging such inequalities through engagement in public life can be expected to achieve better employment outcomes and go into working life with better mental health than comparable peers. This second outcome is particularly important given that students lacking a critical perspective on social inequalities can be more expected to blame themselves fully for poorer outcomes than they anticipated. The BREAK! Project provides a good example of a guidance programme designed to instil critical thinking on career development among young people.

While discussions of social inequalities focus on strong patterns of disadvantage linked to identifiable and coherent groups of young people – here, students from low SES backgrounds, young women and foreign-born students, their analysis helps to enable progression towards higher quality guidance for all students. While girls considering professions linked to the STEM subjects or the skilled trades can be expected to face additional barriers in accessing their career ambitions, in ways that are somewhat similar, the same can be said for boys hoping to work in nursing or childcare. Societal norms can help dissuade individual students from considering and then exploring potential futures in work that are seen as non-traditional. As noted in this paper, statistical analysis of PISA data shows that parental occupation is strongly predictive of teenage career ambitions. Where students seek to understand careers which are not well understood within their family networks, additional barriers will exist. Here, considerable opportunity exists to support career exploration through use of digital technologies.

For many jurisdictions, an important priority is to integrate acknowledgement of, and responses to, social inequalities within provision. The New Brunswick Career Education Framework represents an important new approach within career guidance to address inequalities systematically (New Brunswick Department of Education, 2023[12]). It recognises that young people come into education systems with very different access to privately derived information, resources and experiences of relevance to progress into personally desirable employment. The Framework positions schools as institutions which can serve to compensate for such comparative deficiencies. Further analysis of such interventions is desirable in building a robust platform of scientific evidence to assess the capacity of educational institutions to respond to social inequalities.

This paper raises important further research questions for consideration. There is a need to return to longitudinal and other large datasets to explore how different groups of students respond to career development activities. Building on the analysis of the British Cohort Study by Mann, Percy and Kashefpakdel (2018[13]) and a range of qualitative studies such as those of Rehill, Kashefpakdel and Mann (2017[14]), scope exists to explore in more detail the compensatory effect that school-mediated interventions can have on students experiencing disadvantage and address a fundamental question: how much is enough to compensate for disadvantage? Opportunity exists moreover to broaden and deepen analysis, focusing in greater depth on other groups of students with shared characteristics who face additional barriers in converting human capital into successful employment. Notably, as this paper suggests, ethnic and religious minorities and LGBTQI+ youth demand greater attention as do students with learning and physical disabilities. Inequalities are also often faced by students living in the most rural areas. In this, questions of intersectionality are both important and challenging. Notably, they present challenges to studies using datasets to identify sufficient numbers of such students to follow through interventions into possible outcomes. Hence, the need to build a strong base of qualitative studies, valuing the individual experiences of students alongside large quantitative, longitudinal datasets.

Finally, this paper does not explore the capacity of career guidance to influence the academic success of young people. As literature reviews (Hughes et al., 2016[15]) have confirmed, evidence from experimental and quasi-experimental studies show relationships can very often be found between participation in guidance activities and greater educational achievement. Such studies suggest that students gain in motivation after engagement in guidance, drawing stronger links between their engagement in education and imagined futures in work by providing new sources of information and encouragement. In such a way, guidance systems can be seen to address inequalities in a further important, but different, means than that addressed in this working paper.

References

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