In The Leaders Council’s recent special report into the impact of the Skills & Post-16 Education Act in tackling skills shortages across British industry, Scion Mastery’s Inga Neaves shared her perspective that the manner in which parents encourage their children to have lofty ambitions is partly behind the problem. Speaking on The Leaders Council’s podcast, Inga delves deeper into that viewpoint.
Formerly known as Angloslav Education, Scion Mastery has helped hundreds of students and parents achieve their academic and professional goals since its inception and maintains a close relationship with clients, both past and present. Sitting down with podcast host, Scott Challinor, Inga reiterated that from her experience working with families, parents were often culpable of filling the minds of their children with unrealistic dreams of what they could accomplish, and the knock-on effect proved damaging to skills supply in the UK.
Inga explained: “I’ve been working with families for the past 20 years, all around the world, international families. The main concern I have is not the children, I never have problems with the children, just the parents. Mainly, it’s around what they want for their children. They want their kids to be doing something very fun, but at the same time will allow them to live, be financially stable, and confident.
“I think the emphasis on the joy and the fun element of work as coming first and foremost is wrong. A job is to provide a living, quality of life, and command appreciation and respect. Jobs to me, are not for ‘fun’. As a business leader, I don’t want somebody coming into my office whose purpose is to ‘have fun’. There is plenty of time for that outside of the work environment. But the result of this mentality is that it is being drilled into children that jobs ought to be enjoyable and it puts them off the hard graft.”
Elaborating further on how this impacts the flow of talent, Inga added: “It is difficult to encourage this generation of young people to do anything serious. A lot of kids are absorbing content on the internet around YouTube pets, rappers or influencers doing silly things and that’s what they’re aspiring to be because of the message being drilled into them.
“So, in their more formative years they are likely to think: ‘why do I need to learn if I can go and be a TikToker?’. They don’t understand the importance of education for their future and if everyone wants to be a social media influencer, who is going to run the world?
“There might not seem anything wrong with the message that ‘you can be whoever you want to be.’ But it places a huge amount of pressure on a young person and totally skews their perception of reality. When they’re aiming for the stars, they move away from striving to be a builder or a drainage specialist or someone who can do an honest day’s work and provide for their family and society, because they perceive that as a failure. Yet, when their dream of being a social media star or a singer falls flat, they end up on their parents’ sofa with zero skills to offer. There’s nothing wrong with having dreams, but children need to be taught to distinguish them from real life.”
Calling on parents to be more realistic with their children, Inga continued: “We need to be teaching children that hard work, skill acquisition, learning and earning money are things to be proud of, not just stardom. There’s nothing wrong with doing a normal job for a normal wage. Rather than telling children they can be whoever they want to be, we should help them to be the best versions of themselves.”
Acknowledging the well-documented problem around the perception of labour-intensive industries being damaging to the influx of talent moving into those sectors, Inga emphasised that education has a major role to play in alleviating the issue.
“If we want children to pursue careers in so-called ‘less glamorous’ industries, we must instil an appreciation for the decent, hardworking people who keep this country going. The cleaners, sewage drainers, caretakers, builders, and other professions.
“The pandemic and Ukraine showed us how important these people are. A builder in Ukraine right now is a million times more valuable than a dancing TikToker. Plus, if image is so important to young people out there as they dream of being social media stars, I’d argue that a lot of honest labourers look fitter, happier and healthier than any of these influencers, even if they aren’t sharing posts on the beach every day. If anything, the hard-working people that do spend their downtime doing more glamorous things are often there for short periods and are itching to get back to work. But some young people lack that hunger to go and do a job and are more interested in leisure.
“The big thing I’d say to the government is we need to look at compulsory job placements or work experience from the age of 13 and increase that each year. So maybe two weeks of the year at age 13,
one month when you're 14, five weeks when you're 15 and so on. Work placement is a necessity to introduce kids to work, get them to appreciate what it takes to do a job as well as the interview and selection processes. Employers are looking at skills, abilities and what kids can deliver. We need to shape them up.”
The full interview with Inga Neaves on The Leaders Council Podcast can be found below.
Photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash
