The transition from school to the workplace has never been more difficult to navigate. New data from the Institute of Student Employers (ISE) reveals a startling collapse in the work-readiness of school leavers, with just 25% now considered prepared for the world of work by employers. That is a 14-percentage-point drop in a single year, from 39% in 2023 to 25% in 2024. The decline at graduate level, from 54% to 49%, is concerning. The collapse at school leaver level is an emergency.
This is not a problem that sits neatly on one side of the school gate. It is a shared failure with shared consequences, and it demands a shared response. This article examines the root causes of the work-readiness crisis, what it means in practice for schools and employers, and what both can do to close the gap.
The Numbers Behind the Crisis
The ISE data is the most direct measure of employer perception, but it does not stand alone. Research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), published in December 2024, found that just one in four (28%) employers who had recruited someone aged 16 to 24 in the previous twelve months believed young people were well-prepared for the world of work. Over half (52%) actively disagreed. Almost two-thirds (64%) said young people often lack important social skills in the workplace, and 71% said they do not always know how to behave professionally.
These findings are consistent across the evidence base. The Open University and British Chambers of Commerce Business Barometer 2024 found that 94% of UK firms report skills gaps within their organisations. The Recruitment and Employment Confederation estimates that skills shortages cost the UK economy between £30 billion and £39 billion every year. These are not abstract figures. They represent lost productivity, unfilled roles, increased workload on existing staff, and missed growth opportunities.
| Metric | 2023 | 2024 | Change |
| School/college leavers rated work-ready by employers | 39% | 25% | -14pp |
| Graduates rated career-ready by employers | 54% | 49% | -5pp |
| Employers who say young people lack social skills | N/A | 64% | N/A |
| Employers who say young people do not know how to behave professionally | N/A | 71% | N/A |
| Employers who say young people are not job-ready (CIPD) | N/A | 52% | N/A |
Source: Institute of Student Employers (ISE) 2024; CIPD 2024
What makes this data particularly significant is the trajectory. This is not a one-year blip. It is a sustained deterioration. The areas where employers are most likely to have concerns about new hires are self-awareness and resilience, and both are worsening year on year. In 2024, 54% of employers said graduates did not meet expectations in self-awareness, up from 43% in 2023. The figure for resilience rose from 30% to 46% over the same period.
Why the Gap Exists: The Measurement Problem
Understanding why this gap is widening requires looking at what schools are measured on and what employers are looking for. These are fundamentally different things.
Schools are measured on academic attainment: GCSE grades, A-level results, attendance, and Ofsted ratings. These are legitimate and important measures, but they tell employers very little about whether a young person can communicate professionally, manage their time under pressure, adapt when things go wrong, or demonstrate commercial awareness in a real-world context.
Employers, by contrast, are looking for applied capability. They want to know whether a candidate can do the job, not just whether they understood the theory. The result is a measurement gap that sits at the heart of the work-readiness crisis. Students can leave school with excellent grades and still be entirely unprepared for the expectations of a professional environment.
The Barclays LifeSkills Workforce Ready report (2025) makes this explicit. When employers were asked why they felt school leavers were unprepared, over three-quarters (77%) cited a lack of work experience, and 60% cited a lack of employability skills. Critically, only 34% of young people in education felt that their school supported them to develop their employability skills. Only 36% said they understood what skills employers actually wanted them to have.
This is the core of the problem. It is not that schools are failing to teach. It is that the capabilities being developed are not being made visible, measurable, or transferable in a way that employers can recognise and act on.
The View from the Classroom: What Schools Are Facing
Careers leads and senior leaders in schools are acutely aware of the problem. The challenge is not motivation; it is capacity. Schools are operating under significant resource constraints while simultaneously being expected to deliver against an increasingly demanding set of requirements.
The Gatsby Benchmarks, updated in November 2024 and now embedded in statutory DfE guidance, set the standard for world-class careers provision. Benchmark 5 (Encounters with Employers and Employees) and Benchmark 6 (Experiences of the Workplace) are the most directly relevant to work-readiness, and they are also the most difficult to deliver at scale. Providing every student with meaningful, high-quality encounters with employers requires time, relationships, and logistical capacity that many schools simply do not have.
The government’s ambition to guarantee two weeks of work experience for every student in secondary school is a positive signal of intent. But ambition and delivery are different things. Research from the Education and Employers charity suggests that schools would need to at least double their current provision to meet the 50-hour objective. For many schools, particularly those in areas with fewer local employer relationships, this is a significant challenge.
The consequence is that many schools default to “exposure-based” activities: career fairs, employer talks, virtual insight days. These have real value for raising awareness of career options. They do not, however, develop the capabilities that employers are looking for. Listening to a talk about resilience is not the same as practising it. Watching a video about commercial awareness does not produce a student who can apply it.
What Genuine Capability Development Looks Like in Practice
For schools looking to move beyond exposure and towards genuine skill development, the evidence points clearly towards simulation-based, experiential learning. This approach immerses students in authentic business scenarios where they must make real decisions, navigate real consequences, and reflect on their performance.
The benefits are well-documented. Research consistently shows that students who engage in applied, scenario-based learning develop stronger capabilities than those who receive passive instruction alone. Crucially, this approach also generates evidence. When a student completes a simulation, they do not just gain experience; they produce a record of how they performed, what decisions they made, and how they responded to challenge.
This evidence serves two purposes. First, it gives careers leads and teachers the data they need to identify which students need additional support and which are ready to progress. Second, it gives students something tangible to take into the world of work: a portfolio of demonstrated capability, not just a list of claimed skills.
The Human Skills Index provides the framework for this. By measuring students across eight employer-validated capabilities, including Communication, Leadership, Adaptability, and Commercial Awareness, it translates classroom learning into a currency that employers understand. A student who can show a score of 78 out of 100 on Commercial Awareness, backed by a portfolio of evidence, is in a fundamentally different position to one who simply lists it on a CV.
This approach directly supports delivery against Gatsby Benchmarks 5 and 6, providing meaningful workplace encounters that are scalable, equitable, and evidenced. It also supports Benchmark 4 (Linking Curriculum Learning to Careers) by connecting classroom subjects to real-world applications.
The View from the Boardroom: What Employers Are Getting Wrong
The decline in work-readiness is not solely an education problem. Employers bear a significant share of the responsibility, and many are not yet meeting it.
The most obvious indicator is the collapse in employer investment in training. Spending per employee has fallen by 29.5% since 2011, from £2,410 to £1,700. Total UK training expenditure fell from £59 billion in 2022 to £53 billion in 2024, a decline of 18.5% in real terms. At a time when the capabilities required for the modern workplace are changing faster than ever, employers are investing less in developing them.
This creates a vicious cycle. Employers complain that young people are not work-ready, but they are simultaneously reducing the investment they make in developing them once they arrive. The expectation that schools should produce fully formed, work-ready employees is not realistic, and it is not fair.
The more productive question is: what can employers do to close the gap? The evidence suggests three clear priorities.
1. Engage Earlier and More Strategically
The most effective employers are not waiting until recruitment to engage with young talent. They are building relationships with schools and colleges years in advance. The Careers and Enterprise Company’s Employer Standards data shows that employers who engage strategically with schools see a 51% increase in applications to their business, a 37% reduction in recruitment costs, and a significantly more diverse talent pipeline.
The ISE reports a 22% increase in school-level work experience provision over the past year, driven by employers who have recognised the value of early engagement. These are not companies acting out of altruism. They are making a calculated investment in their future workforce.
Long-term collaboration is particularly effective. Employers who build sustained relationships with the same schools are 29% more likely to report that young people apply for roles in their organisation. The message is clear: sporadic, one-off engagement produces limited results. Strategic, sustained partnership produces measurable returns.
2. Focus on Capability Development, Not Just Awareness
When employers do engage with schools, the focus should be on building capabilities, not just raising brand awareness. The CEC’s analysis shows that when work experience is intentionally designed around essential workplace capabilities, it becomes an engine for talent development.
This means moving beyond employer talks and career fairs towards activities that give students the opportunity to practise the capabilities that matter. Most employers (74%) agree that graduates who completed an internship or placement arrived with better skills and attitudes than those who had not. The same principle applies at school level. The quality and design of the experience matters far more than its duration.
3. Adopt a Common Language for Capability
One of the most persistent barriers to closing the work-readiness gap is the absence of a shared language between education and employment. Schools talk about grades and qualifications. Employers talk about capabilities and performance. These two vocabularies rarely translate cleanly into one another.
The Human Skills Index addresses this directly. By providing a consistent, measurable framework for the eight capabilities that employers value most, it creates a common standard that both schools and employers can use. Schools can develop and evidence these capabilities in the classroom. Employers can assess and develop them in the workplace. Students carry a portable record of their development from one context to the other.
A Shared Agenda: What Needs to Change
The work-readiness crisis will not be resolved by schools or employers acting independently. It requires a genuine partnership, built on a shared understanding of what good looks like and a shared commitment to achieving it.
For schools, the priority is to move from exposure to evidence. This means investing in approaches that develop and measure capabilities, not just raise awareness of career options. It means generating the kind of tangible, portfolio-based evidence that employers can actually use. And it means using data to identify which students need additional support before they leave the school gate.
For employers, the priority is to engage earlier, more strategically, and with a focus on capability development rather than brand building. It means recognising that the work-readiness gap is partly of their own making, and that addressing it requires sustained investment, not just occasional participation.
For both, the priority is to close the measurement gap. A student who can demonstrate their capabilities with evidence is not just better prepared for work; they are better placed to advocate for themselves, to access opportunities that might otherwise be closed to them, and to contribute meaningfully from day one.
The 25% figure is a call to action. It is not inevitable, and it is not irreversible. But reversing it requires both sides of the school gate to take responsibility for the part they play.
Further Reading
For schools looking to understand how to build measurable capability development into their careers provision, the For Careers Leads and For SLT pages on the Enterprise Skills website provide practical guidance and evidence.
For employers looking to understand how to engage more effectively with schools and develop the capabilities of their early careers hires, the For Employers and For HR and L&D Teams pages set out the evidence and the options.
References
[1] Institute of Student Employers (ISE). (2024). Is career readiness in decline? https://ise.org.uk/knowledge/insights/195/is_career_readiness_in_decline/
[2] CIPD. (2024). New research finds just one in four employers recruiting young people think they are well-prepared for the world of work. https://www.cipd.org/en/about/press-releases/just-one-in-four-employers-recruiting-young-people-think-theyre-prepared-for-work/
[3] Open University and British Chambers of Commerce. (2024). Business Barometer 2024. https://business.open.ac.uk/business-barometer-2024
[4] Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC). (2022). Overcoming shortages: How to create a sustainable labour market. https://www.rec.uk.com/our-view/policy-and-campaigns/labour-shortages/overcoming-shortages-creating-sustainable-labour-market
[5] Barclays LifeSkills. (2025). Workforce Ready: Supporting young people with the employability skills that businesses need for growth. https://home.barclays/insights/2025/05/employability-skills-in-schools-and-colleges-report/
[6] Department for Education (DfE). (2025). Careers guidance and access for education and training providers. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/careers-guidance-provision-for-young-people-in-schools/careers-guidance-and-access-for-education-and-training-providers
[7] Department for Education (DfE). (2025). Employer Skills Survey 2024. https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/employer-skills-survey/2024
[8] The Careers and Enterprise Company (CEC). (2026). Employer Standards 2024/25: The business case for engaging in careers education. https://www.careersandenterprise.co.uk/evidence-and-reports/employer-standards-202425-the-business-case-for-engaging-in-careers-education/
