For Australian education, a new imperative is emerging. Deep changes in our community, the economy and work futures mean that all young people need to have different options to transition from compulsory education into adult life, further education and citizenship.

There are two reasons why there is a greater urgency than before. First, the nature of success for all students has radically changed and we are falling behind in shifting to adapt to those changes. Secondly, the cost of not succeeding is falling ever more heavily on those students with lower level skills and lack of confidence.

In this paper, we outline an ambitious vision to empower all young people to navigate their individual journeys from school to a productive, thriving adulthood. At present, many young people falter without a clear understanding of how to realise their strengths and achieve their aspirations. Instead, we need to foster every one of their talents. Our ambition is informed by international research and benchmarks that identify what we want our young people to know, become and be able to do as they leave school. It is based on the premise that recruiters and selectors also need to use better information and form better transition arrangements to align young people’s ambition and skill to education, training and employment opportunities. We articulate three proposals for systemic change: how we treat the 15-19 phase of education; how we identify and measure the capabilities that all young people need, providing a fuller reflection of student achievement, and, how we ensure the tertiary system is accessible to all learners.

We acknowledge that these proposed changes, although relatively simple in concept, have far reaching implications for senior secondary education, post-school recruitment and selection processes, and flow-on effects for middle school curriculum, career guidance and resource allocation. Education is more critical than ever to success in life. Education needs to shift further to ensure all Australian learners thrive in our changing world. With many official reviews and multiple efforts taking place, we must all make sure this moment of change counts.

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