Re-imagining Learner Pathways and Employability in a Fast-Changing World
The introduction of the Curriculum for Excellence in 2004 aimed to broaden and diversify education in the Scottish curriculum. In practice secondary curricula and qualifications have remained dominantly subject-driven and subject to traditional high-stakes national standardised testing. Young learners continue to make subject and qualifications choices around age 14 – a very young age to be making important decisions that are likely to influence or define their longer-term and post-school learning pathways and employment outcomes. The higher education (HE) system also strongly influences young people’s choices of secondary subjects and qualifications through its admissions processes. To what extent are school qualifications and tertiary education pathways in lockstep?
Human knowledge has grown ever more rapidly through the 20th and early 21st century and is now accelerating through the application of AI. What now counts as important knowledge for learners, teachers and employers? Global challenges – health and wellbeing, climate change, food production, clean energy, security, conflict, migration, AI, employment and challenges to democracy and truth itself - all these transcend traditional subject boundaries around which our education system has been constructed and sustained through subject-led qualifications. The pace of change will only accelerate. For better or worse, the 20th and early 21st century ‘liberal’ world order as we know it – social, economic, cultural and political – is disappearing. Many in our society have not enjoyed its benefits, creating social and political divisions. Are learner pathways, and the knowledge, skills, competences and mindsets acquired through primary, secondary and tertiary education and training, still coherent and relevant to the rapidly changing nature and demands of employment and life in the uncertain world of the 21st century? In 2025 the reform of our education system to align with this changing world of challenge, opportunity and employment grows ever more important. A key decision around whether to adopt the recommendations of the Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment (2023) on the reform of the qualifications will impact future learner pathways through secondary into tertiary education and/or employment.
learner pathways
Our education system needs re-imagining. While subjects - the ‘pillars’ of the curriculum - remain important, a rebalancing towards greater breadth of learning and skills development and more diverse learner pathways has become important for 21st century life. However, breadth should not entail studying more subjects but should focus on exploring the connections between subjects through interdisciplinary and cross-curricular learning (IDL) - one of the ‘four contexts for learning’ of Curriculum for Excellence and a key element of the Scottish Diploma of Achievement proposed in the Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment (2023). Knowing how to learn, and motivating learners to want to learn, are becoming as important as what they learn.
By way of background, in the early 1960s only around 4% of UK school leavers continued their education into university. Higher Education expanded rapidly from late 1960s onwards with the aim of driving innovation, economic growth and greater prosperity. In 2023 Scottish higher education entries were around 37% of school leavers, with around 27% entering further education and 24% into employment. In Scotland, as in the wider UK, a majority of school leavers don’t go on to university. Nonetheless higher education remains the aspiration and destination of choice for many.
employability
In practice, education serves multiple purposes – supporting and growing the economy, developing skills, preparing individuals for employment and (not least) enhancing and enriching their understanding of the world and their role within it. However, many of the jobs for which our education system currently prepares young learners may not exist by the time they enter the workforce. Jobs for life are becoming rarer. Higher education institutions focus more on educating students, creating new insights, knowledge and understanding through research, sharing knowledge and developing subject-specific skills. This creates a tension. While many jobs continue to value more specialist knowledge, understanding and training, a large majority (>86%) of large employers (Institute of Student Employers) now say they no longer require higher education graduates with subject specialisms, while an astonishing 96% of graduates said they had changed career pathways by age 241. Subject specialism is no longer the primary determinant of suitability in the majority of graduate recruitment. Employers increasingly value transferable skills and attributes, breadth of knowledge and experience, adaptability, cross-disciplinary thinking and working, problem-solving, collaboration and interpersonal skills – all skills that can be transferred from one role and place to another, and across employment sectors. These should be an integral part of all young people’s education, ensuring the democratisation of knowledge and skills. This is not to suggest that subject specialism through secondary education and qualifications is no longer important; sustaining subject specialism, research, skills and expertise should remain central to education and to prosperous modern economies.
Meanwhile the stability and financial viability of higher education institutions in the UK (and more widely) are currently under serious threat, particularly because of the large and widespread loss of income resulting from the recent rapid decline in the numbers of overseas students studying in the UK. The college sector, which plays a vital role in skilling and upskilling learners to address skills demands, gaps and shortages (not least in key energy, construction and environmental sectors) is also under threat from critical underfunding2. All of these challenges are systemic. The status quo appears unsustainable. Reform of secondary education and the qualifications should address the better alignment of secondary and tertiary education to meet the rapidly evolving and diverse challenges of the 21st century. This will require cross-sector collaboration to develop more flexible learner pathways through the education system.
systemic development
The UK’s newest university, the London Interdisciplinary School, has led the way in developing a problem-led curriculum, ‘teaching undergraduates, graduates, and professionals how to tackle complex, real-world problems by applying knowledge and skills from a range of disciplines, and embracing science, humanities, and the arts’. The recently established Edinburgh Futures Institute shares these aspirations. Other universities are now developing broadly interdisciplinary curricula or requiring a proportion of their undergraduate teaching to take the form of interdisciplinary modules to broaden the mindsets of students entering higher education.
“Collaboration” was the leading ‘word cloud’ word selected by delegates (including many classroom teachers) at the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s 2019 IDL Conference; it is to be expected in most jobs. Yet most of our secondary education and tertiary education and qualifications (our learner pathways) prioritise individual achievements. Collaboration requires a major culture shift, not least in testing and qualifications and in learner mindsets.
Are young learners over-assessed and losing a sense of imagination and curiosity about the world? In the most-viewed Ted Talk of all time (“Changing Education Paradigms”) Sir Ken Robinson thought so. The systemic development of more interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to learning would make a major contribution to the development of curious and ‘job-ready’ students and graduates.
Colin Graham (FRSE) is a Senior Honorary Professorial Fellow, The University of Edinburgh
This post has been adapted from an article in the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s quarterly magazine ReSourcE for Spring 20243, which contains a series of articles written by members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Education Committee.
The image was AI-generated by WriteCream’s free implementation using the prompt “A modern teenaged schoolchild wearing a 2025 school uniform sitting at the wheel of a 1920s racing car on an Edinburgh street with a race setting. The scene should blend contemporary and historical elements.”
Gombrich C. (2024) The link between study and life is broken. We can do better. University World News.
Little P. (2024) The vital linchpin in Scotland’s education ecosystem. ReSourcE, Spring 2024, p20. Royal Society of Edinburgh.