Recently, in my role as a business mentor on a start-up programme, I had a conversation that has played over and over again in my mind ever since.
The gentleman I was speaking to was in his early thirties and exploring the possibility of opening a coffee shop and café in Belfast. As we talked about his background, his career path turned out to be anything but straightforward.
He had first studied pharmacy at Queen’s University Belfast and qualified as a pharmacist. After several years working in community pharmacy, he realised he did not enjoy the profession and returned to university to complete a master’s degree in software development. Today he works as a software developer. With AI ever to the fore, another reassessment of his position has resulted in the potential for a further career change.
Now he is considering entrepreneurship.
It was an impressive journey — but also a costly one in terms of time, money and professional uncertainty.
When I asked what had shaped his early career decisions, he gave an answer that was both simple and revealing: he felt he had received very poor careers advice at school.
As it happened, we discovered that we had attended the same grammar school in Ballymena, although many years apart. His recollection of careers guidance sounded remarkably familiar. Most of the advice he received revolved around filling out a university application form through UCAS. (UCCA in my day!)
There had been very little discussion about his interests, his strengths, or the wide range of careers that might suit him. In fact, he had even been discouraged from pursuing the courses he was most interested in.
A few weeks later, I had another conversation with a work colleague whose son had recently met his school’s careers teacher. Hence the missive.
The verdict from the student was blunt: the advice had been poor and largely confined to which A-levels would look best on a university application.
Two stories (n=2) do not constitute scientific evidence, but they reflect something many parents, students and employers quietly recognise. Careers advice in Northern Ireland schools — particularly in grammar schools — often feels outdated, narrow and overly focused on one pathway: university.
In many schools, careers education has effectively become university application support. Students are guided through choosing GCSE subjects, selecting A-levels, completing a UCAS application and writing a personal statement. These are useful skills, but they are not the same as helping a young person think seriously about what they want to do with their life.
This is partly structural. Schools operate within an accountability system that rewards academic results above all else. League tables, parental expectations and institutional reputation all revolve around GCSE and A-level performance and university entry rates. In that environment, success becomes narrowly defined. A school that sends large numbers of pupils to university — particularly prestigious universities — is seen as successful.
A pupil who pursues an apprenticeship, technical training or entrepreneurship may be equally successful in life, but that outcome does not improve the school’s position in a league table. The incentives therefore push schools toward a single pipeline: strong grades, strong A-levels and university entry.
The difficulty is that the modern labour market no longer works in such a linear way.
For much of the twentieth century, career paths were relatively predictable. A young person chose a profession, trained for it and often remained in that field for most of their working life.
That world has largely disappeared.
Today it is increasingly common for people to have multiple careers over their lifetime. Someone may begin in one profession, retrain in another field, move into management or start a business later in life.
The young man I met illustrates this reality perfectly: pharmacy, software development and now potentially hospitality and entrepreneurship. This is not failure. It is adaptation. Yet our careers guidance systems still treat career choice as a single decision made at seventeen.
The assumption that a young person must choose a definitive career path at that age is increasingly unrealistic.
In their influential book “The 100-Year Life:”Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, economists Lynda Gratton and Andrew J. Scott argue that longer life expectancy will fundamentally reshape how we work and live. Instead of a simple three-stage life — education, work and retirement — many people will experience “multi-stage” lives, retraining and moving between different careers several times.
In that context, the role of careers education should not simply be to help students choose a profession. It should help them develop the curiosity, resilience and adaptability needed to navigate a much longer and more complex working life.
Another structural issue is that many careers teachers are not career specialists. In most schools, careers guidance is an additional responsibility carried by a teacher whose main job lies elsewhere. They may be excellent educators, but they often have limited time and limited exposure to the rapidly changing labour market.
The formal careers system in Northern Ireland sits within the remit of the Department for the Economy and its Careers Service Northern Ireland. However, many pupils interact with this service only briefly, often late in their school career, if at all!? Most guidance still happens within schools themselves.
There is also a cultural factor that is rarely discussed. Many teachers move directly from school to university, into teacher training and then back into the school system. Their professional lives have been spent almost entirely within education. That does not mean they lack insight, but it can make it difficult to offer detailed guidance about careers in industries they have never experienced.
The issue may be particularly acute in selective systems such as Northern Ireland’s grammar schools. Grammar schools excel at academic preparation, producing strong exam results and sending large numbers of students to university. But that same focus can narrow the definition of success.
Because pupils have already been selected for academic ability, the system naturally channels them toward a relatively narrow range of degree-based professions such as medicine, law, engineering or accountancy. These are valuable careers, but they represent only a small part of the modern economy.
Northern Ireland’s schools (particularly the grammar schools) are exceptionally good at preparing young people for exams. But exams alone are not enough preparation for a working life that may last fifty years or more.
In a world where industries evolve rapidly and people may retrain several times during their lives, careers education needs to evolve as well. As Gratton and Scott argue in The 100-Year Life, the future will belong to those who can adapt, learn and reinvent themselves over time.
Our schools should not simply prepare students to complete a UCAS application. They should prepare them for the much longer and more unpredictable journey that lies beyond it.
Eugene Reid is a keen observer of all things business and politics. A former elected representative who has had a career working across the private, public and voluntary sectors! Bringing a unique perspective from a diverse and varied background.
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