Career development in the community of Madrid and Spain: Insights from PISA

This paper explores the state of teenage career development in Madrid, Spain. It sets out findings from the 2022 round of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a comparative international survey of young people in secondary education. PISA 2022 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 Madrid to averages across both Spain and the OECD, disaggregated by a range of student characteristics, including gender, socio-economic background, academic proficiency and school type attended. Compared to students across the OECD, teenagers in Madrid exhibit high levels of uncertainty about their future careers. Students who do express an occupational expectation are very strongly focused in one field of employment: the professions. They also increasingly expect to complete tertiary education. The occupational expectations of young people are poorly aligned with actual patterns of labour market demand. Students participate in career development activities and express attitudes about their career development in ways that are often comparable to OECD averages. However, teenagers in Madrid are less likely to engage directly with employers and people in work than their OECD peers, losing out on important opportunities for career-related exploration.