Teenage career development in Malta: Insights from PISA

This paper explores the state of teenage career development in Malta. 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 Malta to averages across the OECD, disaggregated by a range of student characteristics, including gender, socio-economic background, academic proficiency and school type attended. Students in Malta who 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 largely comparable to OECD averages. However, teenagers in Malta 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. In comparison however to selected countries, students in Malta are more likely to engage in core guidance activities than peers in seven of nine jurisdictions.