Generation gap to fore on sabbatical
SCHOOL leavers are convinced they return from gap years abroad more rounded, and better workers.
But more parents consider the sabbatical a flight of fancy rather than a rite of passage, a survey has found.
Parents stopped 17 per cent of school leavers from taking a gap year, according to the survey of 4440 high school students who graduated between 2012 and 2017 commissioned by school leaver’s website Year 13.
The survey found more parents — 26 per cent — had serious misgivings about gap years compared to the 20 per cent who supported of the idea.
After putting their daughter through the HSC at elite private school Barker College, Sydney parents Mark and Alison Blake weren’t impressed when their daughter, Bianca, 20, signalled her intent to gallivant around Greece instead of starting university in 2016.
“I worried she’d lose her momentum from school, where she was focused on study and in the mode of learning and writing essays,” Mrs Blake said. “I also wondered how she’d pay for a three-month European holiday and what she’d do in between finishing school in November and travelling in July.”
As it turns out, the humdrum of waiting tables at a cafe to save for her trip gave Bianca added impetus to excel at university and land a plum job in the exciting world of sports management. “She learned how hard it is to an earn a living and she became savvy about award rates and weekend overtime rates, which she had no idea about before,” Mrs Blake said. Bianca Blake took a gap year after finishing high school and spent three months backpacking in Europe Picture: LUKE DREW
Once she returned, without two cents to rub together, Bianca found by the time university rolled around she was bored of travelling and working in hospitality and ready to apply herself to her sports management degree at University of Technology Sydney, where she is now in her second year.
The Blakes’ experience was familiar to University of Technology Sydney academic Jenna Price, who said she could tell the students who had done a gap year, because they didn’t cry over marks or get angry when their work was critiqued.