Sep 16, 2026 · 42 min · 10 segments
Liv and Marian are back with an Ask Us Anything Episode, answering questions from people who are on the ground in schools and universities. No guest, no script, unfiltered and real. We've got…
Liv PennieHost
Marian WrightHost
So looking at the PISA data and the OECD report, we know that a rapidly increasing number of students can be classified as career uncertain at the age of 15.
My question is, is that always a bad thing? The data would indicate that being career uncertain correlates with worse employment outcomes later on.
As we try to address uncertainty and move towards planfulness as opposed to decidedness, is career uncertain still a helpful category?
For those of us who have no idea what this report is and what this term of career uncertain means, can you give some context around that and then tell us what you're thinking?
When we talk about PISA data, it's international data across lots of factors of education, performance, capabilities, academics, well-being.
And now, thankfully, career readiness indicators that the OECD Career Readiness Project have identified as things that might work if we go, OK, we're trying to prepare students for their future.
we should probably have a look at a global level about the things that have been done, what works, and are there any indicators at school that lead to better outcomes in the long term? So they collected heaps of longitudinal studies from different countries that all kind of enabled them to triangulate whether some of these indicators provide a likelihood that by the age of 30, these people will be fulfilled.
So there is a happiness piece fulfilled through their work, not out of work and educational training and earning up the same level as they're qualified to.
Now I've always had this issue with the term career certainty because what it's actually measuring is can they express an aspiration at the age of 15?
Can I ask? So they were literally measuring that if you asked a kid at the age of 15, what is it that you aspire to be or could see yourself pursuing in the future, that they would have a response.
Simply, can they express an aspiration? And the rationale behind it was that they had engaged with their future.
So looking at the PISA data and the OECD report, we know that a rapidly increasing number of students can be classified as career uncertain at the age of 15.
My question is, is that always a bad thing? The data would indicate that being career uncertain correlates with worse employment outcomes later on.
As we try to address uncertainty and move towards planfulness as opposed to decidedness, is career uncertain still a helpful category?
For those of us who have no idea what this report is and what this term of career uncertain means, can you give some context around that and then tell us what you're thinking?
When we talk about PISA data, it's international data across lots of factors of education, performance, capabilities, academics, well-being.
And now, thankfully, career readiness indicators that the OECD Career Readiness Project have identified as things that might work if we go, OK, we're trying to prepare students for their future.
we should probably have a look at a global level about the things that have been done, what works, and are there any indicators at school that lead to better outcomes in the long term? So they collected heaps of longitudinal studies from different countries that all kind of enabled them to triangulate whether some of these indicators provide a likelihood that by the age of 30, these people will be fulfilled.
So there is a happiness piece fulfilled through their work, not out of work and educational training and earning up the same level as they're qualified to.
Now I've always had this issue with the term career certainty because what it's actually measuring is can they express an aspiration at the age of 15?
Can I ask? So they were literally measuring that if you asked a kid at the age of 15, what is it that you aspire to be or could see yourself pursuing in the future, that they would have a response.
Simply, can they express an aspiration? And the rationale behind it was that they had engaged with their future.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
