CONGRATULATIONS to all the year twelve students who have completed their formal schooling years.
Congratulations to all students who took another path to complete their year twelve certification.
Congratulations to all the parents, guardians, carers, support workers, teachers, teacher aides, and the many in the community who helped and guided these children into their young adulthood.
What now?
This is the question that students are being asked from year ten onwards. What do you want to do when you leave school? Usual teenage answer: “I don’t know”. Some, however, do.
They have worked consistently and diligently towards attaining their QCSE points and their ATAR. They know they want to go to university to study towards future qualifications and a great job. But this is not the pathway for all, and it is good to see that much of the school curriculum reflects these opportunities.
What a student chooses now as a career is not going to be the career they have for the rest of their working life. A 2023 University of Queensland research story indicated that Gen Z(ed) are likely to have five to seven career changes in their working lifetime. That’s not jobs – that is a change in direction, another set of skills to learn, maybe another qualification or two. That’s a big change across a couple of generations.
Gen Alpha are coming through the schooling system now; they are in year nine. Gen Alpha is the second half of 2010 all the way through to the end of 2024. They have only known a digital world, and they are about to lose their access to social media until they reach the ripe old age of sixteen.
Will the many of the jobs we do now be relevant to them when they hit the workforce. What careers and opportunities will be there for them in 2040?
Those of us in the workforce now are already working with the Gen Z(ed)’s, it is up to us to show them our work ethics and standards (no you don’t get a day off because it’s your birthday), but it is also up to us to learn new methods and take on fresh ideas from our youngest employees.
