Imagine being a young person in early 2020. You might have just started Year 11 after a summer of fun with friends, making some spare cash in your first casual job in a local café. Perhaps you made some new friends and started a relationship.
Within months, that life was up-ended.
Over the past 18 months, Victorians have experienced five lockdowns due to pandemic restrictions. If you were this young person starting Year 11, you would have experienced significant disruptions to your schooling during both years of your VCE, your social relationships would have been stressed and access to employment opportunities severely curtailed.
The pandemic has clearly impacted on the ability of young people to take part in normal social activities and rites of passage. How many end-of-year formals, presentation nights, sporting events and milestone birthday parties have been cancelled? Casual jobs in retail and hospitality, internships and work-experience opportunities, mostly filled by young people, were lost.
These social and work-related experiences are vital as part of the development of our young people. As a community, how can we support our young people?
During 2020, the Committee for Geelong developed an Action Plan for our Future of Work priority which was underpinned by an agreed Preferred Future for Geelong where “our communities are inclusive and equitable, prosperous and resilient, innovative and imaginative, healthy, active and welcoming.”
This included a statement that “Our young people successfully transition into further education and employment” and specifically recognised the importance of the “need to support the next generation of business and community leaders” by engaging young people in the leadership experience.
Getting the support and development of young people as leaders right is vital for the future health of civic life and public organisations. It is also critical in workplaces – private companies, not for profit organisations and government. Our community and economy benefit when young people are provided with opportunities to develop skills relevant to success in adulthood and the workplace. Skills such as decision-making and working well with others. Building self-advocacy and self-determination skills correlate with making a successful transition to adulthood.
The case for building young people’s belief in their ability to succeed is supported by a large and growing evidence base that shows these skills are as important, if not more so, than literacy and numeracy to life chances.
The Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, in seeking to understand the impact of COVID-19 on young people in the school education system, found that the pandemic is likely to have “a wider and deeper impact on our next generation”. (COVID-19’s impact on Victoria’s children and young people (vrqa.vic.gov.au), Commissioner Mohamed.)
The Authority has found that there are:
- Broader safety concerns included increasing conflict, tension and violence within families with usual strategies for seeking safety, such as leaving the house, seeking relief at school, or staying with friends and extended family, have been cut off.
- Negative impacts on the mental health and wellbeing of young people. Loneliness, isolation, disruption of routines and coping mechanisms are being coupled with the stress of remote learning, precarious employment, and unstable housing.
- Impacts on education outcomes, with the ability to engage via remote learning often dependent on the degree of support children and young people have previously received.
Geelong is a wonderful community. I know many of us are sharing the pain of our young people over the past 18 months. Now we need to think about what actions we can take, acknowledging that the pandemic is likely to have a wider and deeper impact on our next generation. Providing our young people with hope and greater connections through leadership experiences might be one avenue.
I wish to acknowledge Bernadette O’Connor from Management Governance Australia for her research and ongoing support to the Committee for Geelong, which has assisted with this article.
Imagine being a young person in early 2020. You might have just started Year 11 after a summer of fun with friends, making some spare cash in your first casual job in a local café. Perhaps you made some new friends and started a relationship.
Within months, that life was up-ended.
Over the past 18 months, Victorians have experienced five lockdowns due to pandemic restrictions. If you were this young person starting Year 11, you would have experienced significant disruptions to your schooling during both years of your VCE, your social relationships would have been stressed and access to employment opportunities severely curtailed.
The pandemic has clearly impacted on the ability of young people to take part in normal social activities and rites of passage. How many end-of-year formals, presentation nights, sporting events and milestone birthday parties have been cancelled? Casual jobs in retail and hospitality, internships and work-experience opportunities, mostly filled by young people, were lost.
These social and work-related experiences are vital as part of the development of our young people. As a community, how can we support our young people?
During 2020, the Committee for Geelong developed an Action Plan for our Future of Work priority which was underpinned by an agreed Preferred Future for Geelong where “our communities are inclusive and equitable, prosperous and resilient, innovative and imaginative, healthy, active and welcoming.”
This included a statement that “Our young people successfully transition into further education and employment” and specifically recognised the importance of the “need to support the next generation of business and community leaders” by engaging young people in the leadership experience.
Getting the support and development of young people as leaders right is vital for the future health of civic life and public organisations. It is also critical in workplaces – private companies, not for profit organisations and government. Our community and economy benefit when young people are provided with opportunities to develop skills relevant to success in adulthood and the workplace. Skills such as decision-making and working well with others. Building self-advocacy and self-determination skills correlate with making a successful transition to adulthood.
The case for building young people’s belief in their ability to succeed is supported by a large and growing evidence base that shows these skills are as important, if not more so, than literacy and numeracy to life chances.
The Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, in seeking to understand the impact of COVID-19 on young people in the school education system, found that the pandemic is likely to have “a wider and deeper impact on our next generation”. (COVID-19’s impact on Victoria’s children and young people (vrqa.vic.gov.au), Commissioner Mohamed.)
The Authority has found that there are:
- Broader safety concerns included increasing conflict, tension and violence within families with usual strategies for seeking safety, such as leaving the house, seeking relief at school, or staying with friends and extended family, have been cut off.
- Negative impacts on the mental health and wellbeing of young people. Loneliness, isolation, disruption of routines and coping mechanisms are being coupled with the stress of remote learning, precarious employment, and unstable housing.
- Impacts on education outcomes, with the ability to engage via remote learning often dependent on the degree of support children and young people have previously received.
Geelong is a wonderful community. I know many of us are sharing the pain of our young people over the past 18 months. Now we need to think about what actions we can take, acknowledging that the pandemic is likely to have a wider and deeper impact on our next generation. Providing our young people with hope and greater connections through leadership experiences might be one avenue.
I wish to acknowledge Bernadette O’Connor from Management Governance Australia for her research and ongoing support to the Committee for Geelong, which has assisted with this article.