Youth pathways to promote lifelong learning

Australia, along with most other OECD countries, has been engaging in 'pathways engineering' over the past decade. Countries have been attempting to make the pathways by which young people move through education and training and into work more attractive, open and flexible, and to provide more opportunities to combine vocational learning with general education. A common motivation in these policy initiatives has been to better prepare young people for an increasingly uncertain economic and social future. There is a growing recognition that a successful transition to work depends on having a sound foundation for further learning, as well as having skills that the labour market requires now. This paper reviews recent attempts in Australia to design pathways that achieve the dual objectives of providing young people with immediately relevant skills and the foundations for lifelong learning.