One in five young Australians does not complete secondary school. One in six is unemployed or underemployed at age 25. And yet the main credential we use to measure success at Year 12 — the ATAR — is not used by 75% of young people. Something is broken in the connection between schooling and what comes after it, and this report puts a dollar figure on what fixing it could be worth.
Commissioned as part of Learning Creates Australia’s three-year Power of Recognising More study, this economic modelling paper examines what happens when we broaden how we recognise learning success at the end of secondary school — capturing a fuller range of skills, capabilities and credentials rather than reducing thirteen years of education to a single number. The modelling, conducted by Nous Group, finds that an individual young person could gain up to $260,000 in additional earnings between the ages of 21 and 30. At the system level, the economy-wide benefits are between $2.1 and $5 billion annually. The gains are greatest for students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds.
The mechanism is straightforward: when young people’s capabilities are more fully recognised, they transition more successfully — completing school at higher rates, finding better job matches, experiencing less unemployment, and entering further education and careers with greater confidence in their own abilities. Schools already piloting broader recognition of learning are seeing early evidence of this: reduced suspensions, higher engagement, stronger senses of individual capability and future orientation.
For anyone working on the middle years engagement question, this report offers an important perspective. The students who disengage in Years 7 to 9 are disproportionately those whose capabilities are invisible within the current measurement system. Redesigning what counts as success is not just an equity argument — it is an investment with measurable returns.