Too many teenagers neither earning or learning
BY EMMA KEMP
One in 10 teenagers and one in five young adults are not engaged in either full-time work or study, a major national research report shows.
The How Young People are Faring report (HYPAF), commissioned by The Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) has painted a bleak picture for the future of Australia’s youth, particularly in light of the global economic crisis.
The report shows that only 71 per cent of 19-year-olds have completed year 12 or equivalent, casting doubt on the Federal Government’s target of having 90 per cent of students complete year 12 by 2020.
Year 12 retention rates are even worse for poorer students at 58 per cent.
Director of Research at the FYA, Dr Lucas Walsh, said the crux of the problem stems from young people not completing school.
Eighty per cent of those who finish high school go on to full or part-time work, compared to just 50 per cent of early leavers.
‘The bottom line is young people who stay in school have chances later in life,’ Dr Walsh said. ‘People who haven’t completed year 12 or equivalent, tend to be particularly more vulnerable in their first year out, and vulnerable throughout the next several years.
‘So we’ve got to be very mindful and aware that this is a particularly vulnerable group in society.’
And even more vulnerable are those young people who live in more remote areas. According to the report, less than one in five 19-year-olds who live in regional areas are engaged in full-time work, and scarcely one in 20 in remote areas. This is a marked difference from the figures for youth living in major cities, where almost every second 19-year-old is engaged in full-time education.
Dr Walsh said that although cities provide more opportunities for work and study than remote regions, the situation is still not good enough.
‘There is definitely a challenge to get more people into training in the inner cities. There’s no question that there’s a challenge, we should be doing better.’
Despite a steady rise in employment in the past few years, the findings reveal that full-time job opportunities for young people have not kept pace with full-time job growth for older people.
Dr Walsh added that the global financial crisis could present further difficulties, especially for women, who are at greater risk than men of not being employed.
‘We are in for big, big challenges ahead. When we look at the longer term statistics on the proportion of teenagers not earning or learning, we can see over the last 10 years that it’s been falling. But back in the early 1990s, particularly around 1991 and 1992, the proportion of those not earning or learning increased dramatically,’ Dr Walsh said.
‘And the report shows that, particularly for women at the moment, that proportion has started to increase in the last year. And we can project ahead, that around 13 per cent of teenagers, we can see it going as high as 15 per cent or even more.’
Dr Walsh said that this disparity in gender is one of the key questions that has come out of the HYPAF report.
He said it is known that young women who go into study tend to choose higher education instead of training and vocational courses, and also added that as a general reflection of society, women are more susceptible to marginalisation in the workplace.
‘Except for this proportion last year,’ he said ‘Because the proportion of teenagers not earning or learning has fallen for men, and it continues to have fallen last year. What that suggests, is that when talking about gender with young men and women, women are more vulnerable,’ Mr Walsh said.
CEO of the Foundation for Young Australians, Adam Smith, said that while the Federal Government’s targets for 2020 are quite bold.
‘In order to achieve the targets we will need to see a nation-wide improvement at double the rate measured between the 2001 and 2006 census,’ Mr Smith said. ‘The need to address this becomes all the more urgent when we can see that the last two economic slowdowns hit those in transition the hardest.’
The Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, said the report provides support for the Rudd Government’s ‘Education Revolution’, which emphasises lifting attainment of Year 12 completion rates.
She said retention rates to year 12 or equivalent in Australia have not improved in the last decade, and are low by Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) standards.
Lifting retention rates to 90 per cent would establish Australia in the top third of OECD countries.
