Parents distrusting of gap years despite their kids’ willingness

School leavers are convinced they return from gap years aboard more rounded, confident and better workers, but most parents consider the round-the-world jaunts a flight of fancy.

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School leavers are convinced they return from gap years aboard more rounded, confident and better workers.

But more parents consider the sabbatical a flight of fancy rather than a rite of passage, according to a survey.

Parents stopped 17 per cent of school leavers from taking a gap year, according to the survey of 4,440 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 of parents supportive of the idea.

Parents and children differ in their opinions about gap years, a new study reveals. Picture: Luke Drew

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After putting their daughter through HSC at elite private school Barker College, Northern Beaches parents Mark and Alison Blake weren’t impressed when their daughter, Alison, 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 Alison 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 very savvy about award rates and weekend overtime rates, which she had no idea about before,” Mrs Blake said.

UTS academic Jenna Price said students toughened up by going overseas without a parental parachute.

The Blakes experience is familiar to University of Technology Sydney (UTS) academic Jenna Price, who recently 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.

According to Ms Price, cotton wool kids whose helicopter parents fought their battles at school toughened up by going overseas without a parental parachute and living a little.

Another sticking point for the Blake parents was how Bianca intended to spend her time abroad.

Bianca’s older sister, Isabella, had done a gap year four years earlier working at a fancy preparatory boarding school in the UK and paid a small stipend to travel on the weekends, but Bianca wanted to let her hair down.

“Bianca was different, she just wanted to take the year off, and even though she likes to party we eventually decided she’s a sensible kid and she was ready for an adventure,” Mrs Blake said.

Gay years are becoming a common thing teens do when they leave school.

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.

“After the gap year I’d satisfied the travel bug, I was ready to use my brain and do something other than travel and clean dishes — to actually accomplish something,” Bianca said.

“Once my parents agreed and I came back from my gap year, they had completely changed their mind and now they’re always praising me about how hard I work at university and they’re not worried about me losing any of my motivation.”

Bianca was accepted to university in 2016, but deferred her enrolment by a year, as did 8,151 of the 110,319 offered university places last year.