Rationale
Australia is one of the few countries in the OECD where school retention declined during the 1990s. Currently there are more than 190,000 teenagers who are neither in full-time work or full-time education. This is occurring at a time when education and training is becoming a lifelong, on-going process and when, in terms of employment, value is being placed on the development of personal and intellectual skills — the so-called ‘soft skills’ like clear thinking, problem solving and relationship-building.
