THE SKILLS THAT MATTER ARE THE SKILLS OF CREATIVITY AND THE ARTS!

”Work is important to help us reach our targets and goals in life, our dignity, and our happiness and well-being. We know that work helps us meet our most basic and complex needs, providing a path towards financial security, securing our mental and physical health, and giving our lives meaning. The prospect of a good job that pays a fair wage should be part of our promise to all our young people.”

The world of work is changing and employers are increasingly looking for people with the right skills, behaviours and attributes to succeed in the workplace. We need young people to develop the skills that matter in the world of work: skills that help improve productivity, that create great teams and that generate the ideas that every business needs to be successful. We all know that the keys to success in school, at work and in life are creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, communication, learning, and good judgment. These skills lie at the heart of the arts!

These are the skills that employers across industries consistently report seeking in job candidates and our capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than our qualifications. In addition, employers are seeking candidates who have other sorts of “soft skills,” such as being able to be adaptable, to make good decisions and be good team players. These sought-after abilities, of course, fit perfectly with the sorts of things that people can do well, but are and will continue to be difficult for machines and technology to do.

All of this suggests that our educational systems should concentrate not simply on how people interact with technology, but also how they can do the things that technology can't do. Developing these skills in our young people is critically important, but we know what works and the latest research on education and employer engagement suggests that we should:

• Do a lot of things… the more the better!
• Do a lot of different things… business mentoring, coaching, employer talks, work place visits, enterprise challenges, work experience, project work, team building etc. 
• Start young… the younger the better!
• Be coercive… “young people don’t know what they don’t know”!
• Be professional… quality matters!
• Ask the students what they think!