Transition is a persisting and central concept in youth sociology, which has helped researchers better understand the paradigms shifts and inequalities in the various aspects of life such as education, employment, culture and family-life. Due to an overwhelming focus on youth transition from education to work in the past decades, scholars have been able to trace patterns of inequalities amongst people from different walks of life, which suggests the availability of opportunities and the trajectories people thus take are stratified. (Wyn & Woodman, Chapter 5: Transitions in 'Youth and Generation: Rethinking change and inequality in the lives of young people', 2014) This essay aims to examine the changes that the Australian educational system
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The focus of this essay is to explore how differences in gender and class have profound effects on individual transitions from the educational system to the labour market and further into establishing themselves in the labour force.
Employment is an essential part of life providing a source of sustenance and identity. Transition into work from education is seen as a marker of adulthood. However, over the past decades, the labour market has undergone complex and drastic structural changes. The reforms in the market have gravitated towards a flexible, low cost, casual work force in a precarious labour market environment. The impact has been lived by all, but has significantly disadvantaged the youth. Over the years there has been a significant drop in full-time employment of youth from almost 40% in the 1980s to 17% in the 2000s. The trend continues. (ABS , 2001) The …show more content…
This shift meant a change in government policy towards youth, which began working on higher retention rates and increasing the number of people completing Year 12 and trying to gain post-secondary qualification, in an attempt to create high skill workers. These reforms have had significant affect on the educational statistics of Australia. There has been a marked increase in the retention rate post 1990s. However, social inequalities continue to marginalize some social groups. For example, the retention rates of private schools have been consistently 15% higher than public schools. (Cuervo & Wyn, 2011) The statistics, released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, reveal a sharp increase in the number of university graduates over the years. The participation rate has also gone up with a high proportion of youth engaging in some sort of formal education. (ABS, 2016) However, prolonged studies mean a delay in transitions into other phases of life like marriage and work. The stress on attaining higher education, especially attending university, means young people are forced to juggle between part time work commitments, social and personal life, while at the same time burdening huge sums of debt to pay off university fees. This makes
The focus of this essay is to explore how differences in gender and class have profound effects on individual transitions from the educational system to the labour market and further into establishing themselves in the labour force.
Employment is an essential part of life providing a source of sustenance and identity. Transition into work from education is seen as a marker of adulthood. However, over the past decades, the labour market has undergone complex and drastic structural changes. The reforms in the market have gravitated towards a flexible, low cost, casual work force in a precarious labour market environment. The impact has been lived by all, but has significantly disadvantaged the youth. Over the years there has been a significant drop in full-time employment of youth from almost 40% in the 1980s to 17% in the 2000s. The trend continues. (ABS , 2001) The …show more content…
This shift meant a change in government policy towards youth, which began working on higher retention rates and increasing the number of people completing Year 12 and trying to gain post-secondary qualification, in an attempt to create high skill workers. These reforms have had significant affect on the educational statistics of Australia. There has been a marked increase in the retention rate post 1990s. However, social inequalities continue to marginalize some social groups. For example, the retention rates of private schools have been consistently 15% higher than public schools. (Cuervo & Wyn, 2011) The statistics, released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, reveal a sharp increase in the number of university graduates over the years. The participation rate has also gone up with a high proportion of youth engaging in some sort of formal education. (ABS, 2016) However, prolonged studies mean a delay in transitions into other phases of life like marriage and work. The stress on attaining higher education, especially attending university, means young people are forced to juggle between part time work commitments, social and personal life, while at the same time burdening huge sums of debt to pay off university fees. This makes