With Riverina's youth unemployment rate sitting at 14.3 per cent, more than 3 per cent higher than the state's average, one high school careers adviser said there should be greater exposure to employment opportunities from an earlier age.

Kildare Catholic College careers adviser Karen Murray said statistics show that students will likely have multiple jobs in their lifetime.

"Rather than thinking about what they're going to do for the rest of their lives, it's changing their thinking to what will they be doing next," she said.

"It's about trying to encourage the idea that no matter what job you start in, you are going to learn lots of transferable skills and take lots of opportunities.

"At my school I've created the hashtag 'what's next', which looks at the post-school options and what students want to do for the next couple of years."

Mrs Murray said it is really important for parents to be educated about career options.

"There's lots of research that indicates the biggest influencer on students about their post-school options and their careers, are their parents," she said.

"While schools encourage students to look at further study, it's an important part of our job to inform parents.

"But industries need to step up with that and engage parents so that they are aware of what is available in their own industry and to ensure that information filters through to kids."

The Catholic Education Office in Wagga supports earlier implementation of careers exploration and is currently developing a program from year 7, which is aimed at expanding to local primary schools.

However, Lutheran Primary School principal Peter Weier disagreed and said primary school is all about developing children's interests and passions.

"Some of the jobs our children will go into haven't even been invented and it's even a bit hard at a secondary level to be given very clear careers advice," Mr Weier said.

"At the primary level, our number one focuses are literacy and numeracy and helping children to be able to function well in an everyday world and in a future careers world.

"We're helping children learn what they're good at and discover who they are and what their passions and interests are."

Mr Weier hoped that his students' passions can be turned into a job.

"We give our children a broad range of opportunities that we can through learning to work out what they're good at, what they like so that they can step into secondary school to further develop their skills," he said.

"If these passions can be turned into a job that would be wonderful, so they can get into work that they enjoy and have a talent for.

"Our dream is for students to work somewhere that they get satisfaction from or a sense of achieving and contributing in a meaningful way, not just working for a pay check."

Mr Weier said schools are focusing on developing students' soft skills, which will make them more ready for the workforce.

"We want compassionate people, who can work together and be able to continue to learn and develop a love of learning," he said.

"We want our individuals to be lifelong learners as they will have 10 different types of work and careers in their lifetime.

"We want flexible thinkers as well as critical thinkers."