Employers demand a compulsory gap year for all students
Friday October 16 2009
EMPLOYERS want students to take a compulsory gap year between Leaving Cert and college to allow them to learn vital workplace skills.
They're worried that our education system is not producing well-rounded school leavers who can think on their feet.
Bosses say the points race means many school leavers are spoon-fed information.
They blame an outdated curriculum and teaching methods that promote rote learning and fail to generate a spirit of enquiry. The broader social skills needed by employers could be gained in a pre-college "year out" where school leavers would work in the voluntary or community sectors.
Priority
A year out is one of the key recommendations in a submission from employers' group IBEC to a review body headed by Dr Colin Hunt reporting to Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe on a strategy for higher education.
IBEC set up a focus group representing indigenous and multi-national companies, including major employers in areas such as pharmaceutical, information and communications technology, hotels and retail and financial services, to formulate ideas.
The three priority areas identified were the establishment of centres of excellence within higher education, deeper partnerships between industry and third-level, and teaching and learning for the 21st century.
They say that a system that supports lifelong learning and incorporates teaching and learning for the 21st century should be at the core of the strategy for higher education.
Employers say they need lifelong learners who are inquisitive, bold, self-reliant, ideas-driven, socially effective, problem solvers, environmentally and socially aware, team workers and capable of long-term and strategic thinking.
In many cases, students are unable to relate what they learned at higher level to the world of work. and lack essential skills, including basic literacy skills such as spelling
IBEC senior policy executive Siobhan Masterson said it was the multinational companies who put forward the idea of a compulsory year out. She said its practical implementation had not been worked through
Other recommendations from IBEC include allowing third-level students manage their own subject choice rather than having it imposed by the college, making all post-graduate courses part-time, and providing more online teaching.
The employers are also critical of what they see as duplication and repetition of third-level courses, which, they claim, has led to a deterioration in the quality of graduates.
- Katherine Donnelly
Irish Independent
