Teenage career development in Norway: Insights from PISA

Abstract

This paper explores the state of teenage career development in Norway. It sets out findings from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a comparative international survey of young people in secondary education. PISA 2022 notably provides considerable data on young people's engagement in, and perceptions of, career development, including information on occupational and educational intentions and participation in career development activities. This paper compares student responses in Norway to averages across the OECD, disaggregated by student characteristics, including gender, socio-economic background, academic proficiency, migrant status and geographic location. Levels of career uncertainty in Norway, as across the OECD, are now very high. Students in Norway who express an occupational expectation are very strongly focused on a small number of occupations, but these are spread more widely across the labour force than is found in most OECD countries. Interest in the skilled trades is notably strong. While the occupational expectations of students in Norway are less constrained by gender than is typical, job and educational aspirations are strongly shaped by the social background. By international comparison, students in Norway consistently engage more frequently in guidance interventions, notably with regard to speaking with a career advisor, but in some important fields of exploration which bring students into contact with workplaces, most still do not engage by the age of 15.