An introduction: Who we are and what this show is about.

What is the great careers program? And does it actually exist? In this intro episode, Marian and Liv answer the questions you probably have before you commit to a new podcast. What is this show about, who is it for, and why are two people who come at career education from completely different angles doing it together?

In this episode, they cover: 

What the name actually means and why it is a little bit cheeky. The argument that career education is not one person's job and never was. What a great career actually looks like — and why the answer is more personal and more complex than most schools treat it. Who should be listening (hint: not just the careers lead). Plus surprise questions for each other including what percentage of school leaders switched off the moment they saw the word careers in the title (Marian's answer: around 60%), what a great career actually is, and what they would both do if they were not doing this.

Coming up in this series of The Great Careers Program

Whose choice is it anyway? Are students really making their own decisions about their futures? AI and student futures: how do we use it for good? What is actually happening to entry level jobs? Beyond curriculum: what schools can do structurally and systemically. Future chaos: how to build hope and optimism through best practice careers education.

Find us

Search The Great Careers Program on your favourite podcast app and follow so you get notified when new episodes drop. Find us on Substack for episode recaps, research links, and the conversation between episodes. Got a question or a story to share? Email us at hi@thegreatcareersprogram.com.

About the hosts

Marian Wright is the founder of Coherence Co-Lab, working with school systems on the gap between intent and implementation. Liv Pennie is the CEO of BECOME Education, a careers education program working with schools across Australia.

References and links

Sir John Holman on the idea that there is 'no single bullet' in careers education.
Dr Glenn Savage, Professor of Education Futures, University of Melbourne.
JP Michel and The Challenge Mindset.
Mike Priddis on AI and the future of work.
Young women choosing careers - who decides? Jo Gleeson, Monash University.

Get in touch

Find us on Instagram @thegreatcareersprogram and on Substack at thegreatcareersprogram.substack.com for episode recaps, research links, and the conversation between episodes. Got a question, a story, or something you want us to talk about? Email us at hi@thegreatcareersprogram.com.

Credits

The Great Careers Program is a collaboration between BECOME Education and Coherence Co-Lab, and is hosted and produced by Liv Pennie and Marian Wright, with production support from Bev Laing. Music by Chad Crouch.

Transcript

Speaker 0:02

We are very excited to announce that we have been recording the first episode of our new podcast, The Great Careers Program. We wanted to tell you a bit about it first so that we can avoid launching our first episode as a complete airball that absolutely no one notices.

Speaker 1 0:20

Marian, I'm gonna start with some easy questions for you. What is The Great Careers Program?

What is the Great Careers Program and why does it exist?

Speaker 0:28

The Great Careers Program is the culmination of work and thinking that you and I have been doing for a while. We started collaborating in about 2021. And since then, as our roles and our work has evolved, the conversation that we started years ago has continued about career education and more broadly the wider purpose of schooling in 2026. And so this podcast is a way for us to bring that thinking to a broader community and to also hopefully shift some perspectives about how to do career education really well in schools.

Speaker 1 1:06

As a name. Why is it called that? And this has got to be a question for you, as it was your idea.

Speaker 1:11

It was my idea, and it was a bit cheeky. We called it the Great Careers program. Part of it was informed by being around schools. Often when you talk to schools and look, I worked in a school and probably said the exact same thing. A lot of schools will tell you they've got a really great careers program. Often it is this thing that is a bolt-on. It is a box that is ticked. It's run by one person who's really overloaded and doing a lot of hard work.

Speaker 1 1:40

I'm co-founder of what I consider a great careers program. So I'd love to be able to say that a great careers program exists. But the point is we know that any program is good as the context and the conditions surrounding success. So I'm all in. There is no the great careers program that you buy, you can build it.

Speaker 2:02

We know that while a program or a set of modules or activities or interventions is really, really valuable, career education is much more than that. Programs, modules hit at one leverage point that often sits on the surface of a really, really big and complex problem. The Great Careers program isn't something that you buy off the shelf and implement. There's a combination of things that are done consistently and well. Like Sir John Holman from the UK said many, many years ago. There's no silver bullet. There's no single intervention that's going to make all of the difference. It is about a range of things that work towards a coherent whole and purpose that are done consistently and that are done really well.

Who should listen? (Hint: Not just career leaders)

Speaker 1 2:47

Who should listen to this podcast?

Speaker 2:50

I think historically, career education has been really boundaried in schools. The job of careers often falls to one or two people. They're the careers lead or the vet lead, and it becomes their job, right? To lead the work across the school. But truthfully, I think we all contribute. Everything we do in schooling contributes to the career readiness and the career development of a person, whether we're consciously aware of it or not. So I think if you work with young people and you are one of those people in schools whose formal responsibility it is to lead careers and vet, yes, you should absolutely listen. But I think beyond that, if you work with young people and have anything to do with schooling and futures, you should absolutely listen. If you're a teacher, you're a middle leader, you're a senior leader, a system level leader, then welcome. You are part of our intended audience.

Speaker 1 3:42

And I'm so excited to be doing this with you after all the long, passionate conversations we've had about the work and the challenges in the work.

Speaker 3:51

But yeah, why are we doing it? Why us? Yeah, it's so funny. I actually remember being in the car with you and saying, Oh my goodness, we should do a podcast. That was years ago. I think both of us really, really see the importance of this work, but both of us come at it from completely different perspectives and lenses. We both have real experiences of living and working in complex systems. And while I'm not a career development practitioner, my perspective is the one of being the classroom teacher and the school or system level leader. And I think that it's a really, really important part of the lens. And so I think together, what we're trying to do is start a new conversation about career education and how it interacts with schooling.

Speaker 1 4:38

I completely remember that car journey, but the thing that sticks out most in my mind is how uh cool the air con was on your Tesla.

Speaker 4:44

Do you remember when I accidentally locked us both out of it? I think I'd just gotten it and I did not know how it worked. I just remember thinking, God, I really wish I wasn't driving Live Penny around in my brand new car that I don't even know how to work.

Speaker 1 5:00

From my perspective, there's so many people in this space that um that get it and and see the challenges and attack it from different angles. And I think the way our work has evolved, it's the perfect kind of place to come together to have those two different perspectives. But as a field, we're really bad at communicating that evidence and going, hold on, this is really broken. And if we fixed it, it has massive benefits to the economy, to students, to young people, to the workforce. It's like there is so much leverage here by doing this work better that's like, you know, doing a podcast with you is gonna be the way, one way that we can actually get the evidence out, make it more practical for people, and just be louder. I think the whole field needs to be louder in this space about how to do it properly and get best practice. That was a few FAQs. I reckon now

Ask each other anything: surprise questions for the hosts.

Speaker 1 6:00

we should go Ask Me Anything mode. So we're gonna keep the whole podcast fairly unscripted and off the cuff. But these are total surprise questions for each other. So, Marian, in percentage terms, how many teachers and school leaders do you think have already switched off because we've called it the Great Careers program?

Speaker 6:18

Probably like 60%. Do you think? In hindsight. Anything that's got careers in the title.

Speaker 1 6:28

But that's a really good point. People think it's not their job.

Speaker 6:31

It is a good point. Or highly likely that um a teacher or principal has seen it and then forwarded it to the career's leader, which is great. But principal and leader, we want you to listen to it. We want you to listen as well.

Speaker 1 6:46

Okay, a tougher one. What is a great career?

Speaker 6:49

To me, a great career is one that you feel like you are in control of building. And it's one that I think fulfills the aspirations and the desires you have for your life at the level that you want them. I think there is a whole sort of social system as well that we often work within that kind of have all these unset expectations about what a great career is. But I, for one, will always advocate for anyone doing whatever they want to do if it gives them the life that they want. What do you think is a great career?

Speaker 1 7:23

I think it's just very aligned. I think it changes over time. I think it's highly personal. And I think one that you're active in, one that you're going, actually, does this serve me right now for whatever needs it is? If it's, you know, at a certain point in time I want to work less. So it's not about momentum, but actually, no, you know, whatever is right for you at the time, but having that capability to be active in it and to have that feeling of agency over it. Defining success on your own terms at different times and having skills to actually navigate it and be open to opportunities and curious. It should be exciting. I think one of the big things about great careers programs that I think has failed is that you know, I firmly believe that thinking about your future as a young person and as an adult is one of the most amazing, it should be the most inspiring and motivating thing you can think about. It's natural human nature to look at the future and go, oh, wouldn't that be awesome? And that drives your focus and kind of spurs you into action to make to do the hard things. And too often we make it all a bit rubbish. So I think it's a great career, is one that you're excited about and enjoy, but it's on your own terms. Okay, a trickier one. In a year's time, who would be your ideal friends of the pod?

Speaker 8:45

Oh, like friend of the pod, like they come on and even answer questions? Can I say two people that I would I would love to speak to about this? I read and follow a lot of the work of Dr. Glenn Savage, who is a um professor of education futures, I think, from the University of Melbourne, whose work covers everything from sociology to policy, you know, education. He has written some really interesting pieces that have really resonated with me about um how schools market for commercial markets. So um, Dr. Glenn Savage, if you listen, you probably wouldn't. But look, we'd love to, you know, have a conversation with you about careers and futures. Um, and then the other person whose work that I think really aligns with the way that we think and talk about careers is JP Michel. I think his work on, you know, broader than careers is also just about agency. And I think that that is something that schools really, really want to focus on and develop in young people. But sometimes I do think that it happens independently of thinking about futures.

Speaker 1 9:50

A friend already who I'd like to be a friend of the pod is Mike Priddus, who's just been doing lots of work on AI and the future. He's always has a lot to say, so I'd definitely love to talk to him. Jo Gleeson would love to have back and see how her work on students choosing their own careers has gone. And locally, I think in Australia, I think the the new metrics project, moving kind of the how do we measure success, but also be really well. There's so many people. Ken Robinson, but he's dead. Um, yeah, it should be kind of a alive or dead friend of the pod, like dinner party guests.

Speaker 10:26

I was also thinking I'd love to talk to some young people and also um just some schools and systems who have tried to take a coherent approach to our futures and realize that it's not something that sits independently. So um, yeah, I guess they should absolutely reach out to us, right? If they want to tell their story, because we'd yeah, we'd love to talk to you. Any more questions?

Speaker 10:52

No, I think you you can go. Okay. Have you got anything? Uh yes, I have three. My first one is if uh you could do another job or career or do something else with your life beyond what you are doing right now, what would you do?

Speaker 1 11:05

That's that's really hard. Because I always thought it would be so it would I think it would still be about young people. I I saw a volunteer role the other day, which is around um you can go in and help families that are struggling with younger kids. And now my kids are teenagers, I really miss little kids, so I was like, oh, I could do that. You can come and help me. Struggling. Uh struggling months. I just like to play with little toddlers and uh instead of teenagers that go, oh bruh, bruh.

Speaker 2 11:36

Yeah.

Speaker 1 11:37

So I think it probably it would still be something with young people, but potentially that kind of thing. And I also love the world of um career development in sport. I find the athletes' careers and career trajectories and the whole athletic identity. We've done a lot of work with cricket and RL and football in Australia. I find that space as a really, really significant um siloed pattern of challenges, very different to the equity challenges we see across young people at scale, but that career development for athletes is also really interesting. What about you? I want to ask you that question too. You'd be something creative, wouldn't you?

Speaker 12:17

Yeah, there's two things that probably come to mind. Although I don't know what AI is going to do to these professions. So I think one is screenwriting. I love TV and movies. I am married to a filmmaker. So we're those really annoying people that watch things and then just pull everything apart. And I would love to write a series or, you know, a feature film one day. I think it would be really fun. And then the other thing I think I could probably see myself doing is a clinical psychologist. Wow. I I think particularly after becoming a parent, the area of perinatal mental health is just such an important one. And so I could totally see myself in a role like that. And I did even look at how many years it takes to retrain, and I was like, no, it's a half past for right now.

Speaker 1 13:08

For now. Maybe later. Yes, completely. Oh, that's a good question.

Speaker 13:13

But I love that, right? Because I think people aren't just their jobs and people are more than one thing. And I think it's good to see ourselves as humans who have many things that we are interested in and passionate about. My second question for you is what is your answer to the question, I don't know what I want to do with my life? I'd love to have a really great answer. Oh, it's not really a question, right? What do I want to do? Maybe it's yeah, what is your response? And I think every parent has probably been there when they're they ask a young person and they go, All right, well, what do you want to do?

Speaker 1 13:47

And they go, I want to know when yeah, I haven't often asked that question directly, but now we're coming up to year 10 subject selection and it's inevitable you have to. And I know that my own children have both got their massive areas of interest. Like one is like a total geography nerd. Like, if there was a job geography, it would be like that, knowing knowing everything about everywhere in the world. There's this amazing game, GeoGesser, where they just give you pictures of anywhere in the world, just drop you, and it's your you have to, in a couple of minutes, work out where you are by navigating around, looking at signs, looking at the vegetation. It's like they're obsessed with it.

Speaker 14:30

Um so it's me so stressed. I can feel my anxiety just even thinking about that. I'd be that person, like, I don't know.

Speaker 1 14:39

I don't know. Like anywhere in the world, and I was just like, is it always got signs or language? Like, no, it could be in the middle of a desert. Wow, that's anyway. So, but at some point, you know, there has to be a like, how do you work this stuff out? I think broad exploration and seeing what you hate and what you what you naturally gravitate towards and what you're naturally absolutely not. But I think the biggest thing is helping young people see those moments of inspiration. Like when something gels and they it sparks of interest, how do they dive into that? And you don't want everything to be about, okay, what career is that? But you know, it's gently just going, opening up that world and going, oh, you know, that TV show that you really found really funny. Like, how would someone write that funny? How do you know if you're funny enough to write that? My daughter thinks she's very funny and would actually love to be a script writer, but like working that out softly to go, what are those things you love? What makes that funny? How do you know? How do you train to be that funny? Would they work in a team? You know, hearing the Ted Lasso crew talk about their script writing process is so much fun. It does sound like the dream job. I just don't think I'll be very good at it. But just hanging out with funny people although being amazing and creating something that makes everyone happy and joyful would be amazing. I think it's just helping them to dive in when they see something that sparks their interest and and then looking at the world as well with open eyes and curious eyes about if there's something you love, like the world of football, what are what are all the jobs that you can't see in that? If you really wanted to be in that space, what could you be? How do you combine and and and hack together different ones if you love maths and data or um all of those things? So just getting creative and curious, I think. Rather than expecting them to have an answer, helping them to just explore broadly. Um I'd love to have a better answer. I'd love to be able to say, yeah, there's this one test you can do or one conversation to have, but it's so dependent on the individual as well and where they're at in their thinking.

Speaker 16:47

My takeaway from that is maybe we should ask a different question instead of what do you want to do? Maybe it's what are you curious about? What don't you know? What do you want to learn more about? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 17:02

Diving in when you see something that interests you.

Speaker 17:04

Yeah, cool. Last question. Every day I open up a feed, any feed, and you know, 80 to 90% of it is about AI ruining everything, ruining employment. A lot of it is, you know, doomy and gloomy. And I suppose everything feels alarmist. And so when you look at the landscape of the impact that this technology is having on jobs and the signals that you're picking up on, what are you hopeful about? What gives you optimism?

Speaker 1 17:40

The one core thread that comes through, maybe slightly quieter than everything else and all the alarmist things, is the humanness. That those absolute essential skills will be more valued than ever. I don't question for a second that jobs will go to those who use AI more than be replaced by AI. AI literacy and data literacy is mandatory, I think, as we go forward. That creates an equity issue. But I'm very hopeful that there is a dawn of human value, really valuing what's truly human. And I think the I think we've all got a role to play in making sure we celebrate the real human skills. I think it means that there's jobs that will be more exciting, less mundane. We can do more as humans in terms of innovation, and but it has to be in the right way. Yeah, it is doom and gloomy and it's really scary. So I think more than ever we have to give students and young people a reason and be able to face that doom and gloom, not try and bury it and go, hey, you just pick a job and life will work out. But go, no, this is complex, uncertain times. You need to engage now and be able to deal with that and and yeah, absolutely engage with that uncertainty. And because that's what you're gonna be living in, but let them be excited about it as well.

Speaker 19:06

That's good. Liv, will you uh tell us a

What you can expect from Series 1 of The Great Careers Program.

Speaker 19:14

bit about what will be in the podcasts?

Speaker 1 19:16

Okay, so each episode there are gonna be some really serious valuable bits. We're gonna take one piece of data or evidence that's really relevant to what's going on in schools and in students' minds and in students' growth. We're going to zoom in to what that means for young people and their future, and then zoom out to what that school and system level context is like. How are schools addressing it? What are the challenges to leveraging this opportunity? Um, we'll share success stories, challenges, the policy shifts that go with it. And most importantly, we'll always share one thing you can do about it tomorrow, either as an educator or careers advisor in school, or from your perspective, as that, you know, the leader or someone who is looking at the structure and overall context. And as well as the serious valuable bits, we've got a million ideas of the fun bits we can do as well. It's really important, I think, as we talk about all the doom and gloom and you know the complex systems and the pressures on schools. We're talking about the future, we're talking about students' futures. It should be exciting, it should be motivating, and they should be optimistic about the future. And that makes them more ambitious about finding a place for themselves in the world. So we really want some fun stuff each episode. Um, things like I didn't know that was a thing, we've just come up with a new heck no that we need. Um, we'll have some uh chaos advice and other fun bits. Tell us about some of the topics we might cover. Okay, in terms of the topics, we've tried to pick the ones that are most relevant to all schools that people will be experiencing on the ground, not just as careers leaders, not the kind of admin side of the role, but the ones that span the education outcomes, the curriculum, the systems, the structures, as well as student futures. So the first one is about whose decision is it anyway. So our students really making their own choices, and that's great for subject selection time. We can't not talk about AI and how we use that for good in student futures. We'll also have to hold a whole separate one on what's happening to entry-level jobs. There's a lot of data around and myths about what's happening, so we'll try and dig into the truth about what's that and what we can do about it. Another episode touches on beyond curriculum, what schools can do structurally and systemically to position students for futures. And of course, future chaos, uncertainty. We might have to call it the doom and gloom episode. How can we create some some hope and optimism in it through doing best practice careers education?

Speaker 21:49

And Liv why should people listen?

Speaker 1 21:52

We, you know, these are not new ideas or new challenges. Um, there's so many of us working in this space that are really passionate, close to the evidence. But and there's pockets of excellence all over the place, people doing their right things. We really need to reinvigorate those ideas, come together as a collective. So if you feel like you're the one shouting in the wilderness, or often it can be quite a lonely space in schools, if you're the one that gets it and goes, This is really important. How can everyone else not see this? This is where you'll find that voice and that collective, especially when schools and the education systems feel like they're kind of pulling in different directions to what student futures need. We'll definitely have new perspective and fresh ways to persuade others to help you find that voice and build that credibility and power and voice internally. And I think, you know, essentially it's very easy to buy or be tempted to buy a tidy solution that is the one thing that will do it. Um, a promise of a great careers program. But it is complex work.

Speaker 22:53

Two things as we close out. One, in the lead up to the release of the first episode, we would love for you to search the Great Careers program on your favourite podcast app so you can follow us and get updates in your feed for when we drop a new episode. And you can also find us on Substack. If you just search The Great Careers program, you can subscribe to our newsletter. We'll do episode recaps, we'll share all the research and thinking that we're talking about in episodes, and it's a great way for us to hear from you as well.