Every few years, the same anxiety resurfaces. Employers say young people are not ready. Not ready to work. Not ready to communicate. Not ready to think independently. Not ready to show initiative.
But readiness does not suddenly become an issue at age eighteen. It does not materialise in the interview room nor can it be discovered in a poorly written CV. Readiness is cumulative. It is shaped slowly, subtly and systematically, long before a young person ever applies for a job.
If we are honest, the warning signs appear much earlier.
Increasingly, teachers at the nursery and reception level are raising concerns about children entering formal schooling without what were once considered basic skills. Some struggle to follow simple instructions. Some have difficulty holding a pencil. Some are not fully toilet trained. Others cannot open their own food containers or manage personal tasks without constant adult intervention. These are not judgements, they are observations. And they matter, because early independence is not about discipline. It is about confidence, motor development and self-efficacy.
At the primary school level, the conversation shifts but the pattern remains. We lament children who cannot read fluently. We shake our heads at weak numeracy and poor recall of times tables. We talk nostalgically about what children “used to know” before they came to school. What is often left unsaid is that many of those foundational skills were once reinforced at home, in communities, through repetition, routine and shared responsibility. Today, that reinforcement is uneven, inconsistent or missing altogether.
By the time students reach secondary school, the gaps have widened. Content becomes more demanding, but the underlying skills required to access that content are shaky. Reading comprehension affects every subject. Poor writing masks understanding. Weak organisational skills look like laziness. A lack of confidence presents as disengagement. We respond by pushing harder on exams while quietly ignoring the scaffolding that was never properly built.
Handwriting offers a particularly revealing example. Writing is not just a method of recording information. It is a cognitive process. The physical act of writing strengthens memory, reinforces letter recognition, supports reading development and builds the fine motor skills that underpin learning more broadly. When students write, they are not only expressing ideas. They are organising thought, processing language and engaging multiple parts of the brain simultaneously.
As technology advances, writing by hand is practised less. As writing is practised less, penmanship declines. As penmanship declines, some teachers understandably allow students to type their work because it is simply unreadable. The work becomes legible, but the learning process changes. We solve the immediate problem while weakening the very skill that supports deeper understanding. It is a double-edged sword that education systems across the world are now grappling with, particularly as reading, writing and motor development are so tightly intertwined.
None of this exists in isolation. These early and ongoing deficits do not magically disappear at graduation. They travel with students into adulthood, into training programmes, into workplaces. So when employers complain that young people struggle to communicate, to articulate what they know, to manage expectations or to adapt to professional environments, they are not describing a sudden failure. They are describing the end result of years of compounded gaps.
This reality becomes even more complex in the age of artificial intelligence. It was only a matter of time before AI began writing CVs, cover letters and application responses. That development should not shock us. Tools have always shaped how people present themselves. What has changed is the scale, speed and accessibility of those tools.
We now live in a time where what someone can produce on paper, or on a screen, no longer guarantees what they can actually do. Education systems across the world are already struggling with this. Schools and universities are racing to detect, restrict or circumvent student use of AI. But banning a tool inside an institution does not prevent its use outside of it. People will use whatever resources are available to them. That is not a moral failure. It is a technological reality.
This forces an uncomfortable but necessary shift. Assessment can no longer rely solely on polished outputs. The same applies to recruitment. If a CV can be generated, refined and optimised by software, then the real measure of readiness must move beyond what is written to what can be demonstrated.
Perhaps this means interviews that require candidates to explain their thinking out loud. Perhaps it means asking applicants to complete tasks, solve problems, communicate ideas or demonstrate skills in real time. If someone says they can do something, the system must create space for them to show it. In an AI-driven world, the ability to interact with other humans, to think on one’s feet, to adapt and respond, becomes even more valuable, not less.
This is where voices like Philip Tempro of JADA have been particularly instructive. His insistence on skills – real skills – not paper qualifications, forces an uncomfortable reckoning. We have built a system that rewards completion over competence. We elevate certificates while undervaluing capability. We treat technical, creative and vocational pathways as alternatives rather than essentials. Then we express surprise when young people arrive at the labour market underprepared for the realities they face.
Unrealistic expectations, another frequent employer complaint, are also learned. If young people are never meaningfully exposed to the world of work, never taught how progression actually happens, never shown the relationship between skill, effort, experience and earning, then disappointment is inevitable. You cannot expect realism from people who were never given a realistic picture.
What this moment demands is not another round of blame directed at youth, parents or teachers in isolation. It demands a serious conversation about multi-level support. Early childhood development. Family engagement. Community responsibility. School design. Curriculum relevance. Industry partnership. These are not separate conversations. They are the same conversation happening at different stages of the pipeline.
There was a time when the village filled in the gaps. Not perfectly, and not romantically, but collectively. Children learn from many adults. Behaviour, communication and responsibility were reinforced across spaces. Today, that collective scaffolding has weakened, but the expectations remain. We want independent, capable, work-ready adults without rebuilding the systems that once helped produce them.
So perhaps the question is not whether young people are ready for work. Perhaps the more honest question is whether our education system, our social structures and our collective priorities are ready to take responsibility for what readiness actually requires.
Until we confront that, we will keep publishing the same headlines, having the same conversations and watching the same gaps widen, all while wondering how the system keeps failing without ever asking how it was designed to succeed.
Dr Zhane Bridgeman-Maxwell is a science educator, researcher, writer and disruptor of outdated education systems in Barbados. Focused on redesigning learning through policy shifts, change management and pedagogical innovation, she amplifies the voices of students, teachers, and parents, while reimagining what school can and should be.
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