‘It almost seems like we have built an education system over the course of time, that heavily focuses on preparing students for exams while leaving them unprepared for everything else that comes afterward.’.. a sentiment I have heard repeated back to me almost a dozen times over the past few years.
That unreadiness to tackle the world of work does not stem from laziness, or lack of intelligence, or tied to the narrative that young people ‘do not want to work anymore’. If anything, it stems from a system that became strangely uncomfortable with reality.
The reality is the world of work is changing faster than education is willing to adapt to it, AI is taking more and more space reshaping industries, and the skills we thought were once inherent to human nature, (and we also took for granted), are now significantly lacking.
While attending the WBL Champion Education Summit organised by Knights College and its European Partners, I kept returning to this uncomfortable thought throughout the discussions and panels.
We have somehow accepted that preparing students for work can happen without the element of work itself. And maybe that’s one of the problems we are currently facing. We designed education around controlled environments, predictable questions, safe answers, rewarded memorisation as intelligence and penalised mistakes before they could become lessons learnt.
Then suddenly, at 16, or 18 or 20.. we expect young people to enter workplaces requiring initiative, communication, confidence, problem solving and creativity under complete uncertainty.
We keep telling students to be proactive. To take initiative. To think critically and communicate professionally. But when are we exactly allowing them and giving them the space to safely practice any of these competencies consistently? ‘Repetitio est mater studiorum’, or as in simpler terms, as put by Hip Hop Artist Dwayne Carter Jr
‘Repetition is the mother of learning.’
Which makes it slightly absurd that we expect student to become work ready through the occasional group projects or one-week placements. These experiences matter, for sure, but real work readiness is built through continuous exposure to real environments and situations to put these soft skills to practice and use.
Young people know this.
This is something I constantly notice through the work we do at JA Malta; students do not lack ambition nearly as much as they are lacking exposure.
Through countless conversations shared with these students over 4 years at JA, I’ve learned that students are walking around carrying invisible imposter syndrome long before entering their first workplace experience. They keep wondering if they are good enough, if they are smart enough, what would happen if they made a mistake and could they actually pull this off?
So how can we expect students to be ready for a workplace environment, more specifically, an AI enabled workplace, while we rarely ever give them the opportunity to prove it to themselves that they can and are able?
Confidence is accumulated. Students will not feel confident or become confident just because we told them that they are capable during a school assembly. They become confident after handling a difficult customer, after pitching an idea, after managing a conflict with a colleague, and surely, after solving a real problem where the answer is not sitting at the end of a textbook.
That is why I think we misunderstand WBL altogether.
At the summit, there were repeated discussions about labour market gaps, AI disruption, employer expectations, digital transformation, transversal skills, and the disconnect between education and industry.
All important conversations. But underneath all of them sits a simpler truth we often overcomplicate: young people learn best when they are given responsibility and allowed to participate in the world they are supposedly being prepared for.
And ironically, this matters even more now in the age of AI. Because AI is quietly exposing something education systems have avoided confronting for years: information alone is no longer enough.
Students and employees can now generate summaries, presentations, reports, and strategies within seconds. Technical tasks are becoming increasingly automated (especially those in junior roles). But the human side of work is becoming more and more valuable, not less.
Can you communicate clearly? Can you work with people? Can you think independently? Can you adapt when things go wrong? Can you navigate uncertainty without freezing?
These are becoming premium skills.
The scary part is that many young people are underprepared today because the environments surrounding them prioritise correctness over curiosity, and compliance over contribution. And even more so, the education system, and parents, became too focused on protecting students from discomfort instead of preparing them to embrace stepping outside of their comfort zone.
This is something we witness constantly through experiential learning programmes, entrepreneurial education, and work place exposure opportunities. The transformation in students after repeated exposure to real responsibility is immediate. Students who barely engage at the beginning of such programmes, end up confidently stepping before crowds to deliver presentations and defend their ideas with pride on stage in front of an audience of 500 people.
That change does not happen overnight.
It happens when young people finally enter environments that treat them as active participants rather than passive recipients.
Employers need to also understand this clearly; Work readiness cannot only be demanded. It needs to be developed collectively. Businesses cannot continue to complain about talent gaps or skill shortages while keeping the workplace doors closed to young people.
If we want students to understand the place of work and the environments that surround a workplace, then workplaces themselves need to become part of education, meaningfully. That means offering mentorship, exposure, academic and professional guidance (both in parallel), and assessment of skills and growth not just by learning textbooks, but by practising what these textbooks aim to instil.
Somewhere along the way, I fear we have made life an extracurricular for students, and potentially, if we stop treating students like future contributors, rather than current ones, they would surprise us.
So maybe real innovation in education isn’t creating more platforms, or generating more buzzwords and drafting more strategies.. maybe it is finally having the courage to reconnect learning and learners with reality again.
