In New Zealand, 60 000 young people leave school every year. Like in many other countries, there is a concern that young people do not always leave school with the practical skills and knowledge to successfully navigate life as young adults and to thrive in wider society. While in some countries, courses related to citizenship or life skills are built into the requirements for graduation, New Zealand’s highly flexible school-leaving certificate and the high-level of autonomy devolved to schools for curriculum design means that there can be wide variation in how effectively young people are prepared for life after school.
School Leavers’ Toolkit – New Zealand
Abstract
In 2017, the New Zealand Government committed to providing young people with a “School Leavers” Toolkit’ to ensure they have the knowledge, skills and capabilities required to transition successfully to further education, training or employment. The School Leavers’ Toolkit was launched in 2019. It provides information and advice on civics, well-being, financial literacy, workplace skills and personal well-being. It is aimed at students aged 13 to 18.
Co-design and engagement with young people directly influenced the final approach and design. For example, young people asked for content on mental health and well-being, leading this topic area to be more prominent in the youth-facing website. While designers had originally planned for the website to include fun graphics, user testing with young people revealed they preferred to see themselves as adults in the imagery, with realistic but aspirational photos, bright block colours and minimal text.
A dedicated website helps schools to optimise the effectiveness of the Toolkit by integrating its approaches into school life. The Toolkit includes a range of resources for use by staff secondary school staff. These include lesson plans on themes related to moving out of home, government and voting, money and tax and getting a job. The Toolkit also includes guidance on how to connect with local employers to help students discover, explore and connect with the world of work and activities to support the civic education of students. Schools are encouraged to develop a local curriculum and to integrate their own resources into the Toolkit, notably in relation to financial literacy, the development of workplace competencies, civic rights and the personalised support of students.
The School Leavers’ Toolkit includes: 1) a youth-facing website, also available in te reo Māori, with resources and information about tertiary education, moving out of home, getting a job, government and voting, money and tax and well-being; 2) a teacher-facing website with curriculum resources and tools for teaching civics and citizenship, employability skills and financial capability; 3) a curriculum integration framework for Māori Medium schools for key skills and knowledge; and 4) short, informative and funny videos on the topic areas of the School Leavers’ Toolkit and “myth buster” videos for use in social media campaigns targeted at young people.
As of May 2022, the number of users who had accessed the School Leavers’ Toolkit websites was 97 000, with over 240 000 page views. The New Zealand Ministry of Education committed to continuing a programme of continuous improvement and evaluation of the School Leavers’ Toolkit until at least December 2024 alongside wider reform activity for upper secondary education.
This practice also supports the implementation of provision II.7 of the OECD Recommendation on Creating Better Opportunities for Young People (OECD, 2022[1]).
Further reading
[6] Ministry of Education (n.d.), Supporting school leavers to take the next step, https://www.springload.co.nz/work/school-leavers-toolkit/ (accessed on 7 March 2024).
[4] New Zealand Government Ministry of Education (n.a.), School Leavers’ Myths - mashup, https://school-leavers-toolkit.education.govt.nz/en/tertiary-education/.
[2] New Zealand Government Ministry of Education (n.d.), School Leavers’ Toolkit, https://school-leavers-toolkit.education.govt.nz/.
[3] New Zealand Government Ministry of Education (n.a.), School Leavers’ Toolkit for Teachers, https://sltk-resources.tki.org.nz/.
[7] New Zealand Government Ministry of Education (2020-22), School Leavers’ Toolkit Videos, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy7eFR9M9r0V-w4jwquzdjq1huVNVHkYV.
[1] OECD (2022), Recommendation of the Council on Creating Better Opportunities for Young People, https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0474.
[5] Open Government Partnership New Zealand (2022), Update on commitments from OGP National Action Plan 2018-2021, https://ogp.org.nz/new-zealands-plan/third-national-action-plan-2018-2020/update-on-commitments-from-ogp-national-action-plan-2018-2021 (accessed on 7 March 2024).
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