Must invest in education and training
This is a critical time in our economic history. Social scientists, work force experts and government strategic planners among others are projecting severe shortages in skilled workers in the next ten years. While the skills gap will be a crisis in 2010, the lack of basic skills, technical skills and competencies is an issue for industry right now. To meet this challenge, we need to invest in worker education and training.
At this critical juncture in our history the PLP is facing a perfect opportunity to build a national workforce education and training system that provides the skills that are needed for today’s and tomorrow’s workplace.
Mr. Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in the United States has said: “It is not enough to create a job market that has enabled those with few skills to finally be able to grasp the first rung of the ladder of opportunity. More generally, we must ensure that our whole population receives an education that will allow full and continuing participation in this dynamic period of American economic history.”
Workforce development has traditionally been about providing a “second chance” system for those individuals who may have fallen through the education attainment safety net. Certainly we must continue our efforts to assist those individuals who find themselves in this position, but workforce development has a broader mandate and responsibility than this focus alone.
Severe “skill gaps” that appeared in the 1990s showed that workforce development is about much more than assisting the unemployed and the disadvantaged.
Workforce development is also about producing a workforce that employers need if they are to succeed in a rapidly changing, highly competitive knowledge based global economy.
It is now clear to all of us that economic development and workforce development are two sides of the same coin, and therefore their strategies and activities need to be aligned and purposive if we are to continue to compete and create economic stability and sustainability for all of our citizens. We cannot and must not be unclear about our responsibility to provide meaningful and sustainable employment opportunities for all of our people. We must do all that we can to reasonably ensure that our people are qualified to receive recruitment and advancement opportunities in highly skilled, well-paying jobs in our country.
In this regard, we need to improve accountability of all our government-funded programmes, namely the public education system, the Bermuda College and the National Training Board. We must also seek innovative ways to eliminate duplication <$>through programme consolidation. We must also continue to develop partnerships, which will enhance the role of employers <$>in the national workforce system. And overall, we must demonstrate greater levels of innovation and flexibility<$>.
We believe that making incremental changes in current programmes and services is needed, but it is not enough. We believe in a more strategic approach to workforce education and training. We must create a seamless, dynamic and efficiently funded system for advancing the skills, credentials and productivity of our entire workforce.
That is why we have talked about increasing standards and accountability; benchmarking our performance against international student achievement populations; allowing greater transparency in the public disclosure of the performance of our public schools; and defining goals and timetables for the uplift of academic output measures over time.
We have been calling on the PLP to provide the people of Bermuda with a national education programme, which clearly outlines their vision for public education and the strategic model for achievement and accountability moving forward. The government has put forward its Social Agenda without a clearly articulated vision of an education plan or a national development plan. How are we going to benefit from some of the benefits of this knowledge based global economy?
For most of us, work is a necessary part of our own lives. We are not independently wealthy. We have to work for most of our lives to take care of our families and ourselves. Most of us have JOBS<$>, which one of my good friends says is just an acronym for Just Over Broke.
We sigh out loud and say under our breath: “Thank goodness I have a job.” But for many of us we are currently Just Over Broke.<$>
I was recently reading the Caribbean NetNews and on Wednesday, January 11, 2006 I came across an interesting article with the following headline: “Turks and Caicos launches five year education plan consultancy”.
The stakeholder partners to the development of the five-year plan are the Ministry and department of Education, the Principal of the Community College and the Advisors to the Minister.
The expressed goal of this group is
The final sentence of the article concludes with these words: “The education development plan is said to be critical to all national development goals.”
Over the past several years we have suggested that the government enter into partnerships with international education assessment agencies such as the OECD and the IEA to ensure the development of an education plan. We believe that this is part of the critical path that prepares our children to successfully compete in the global community and to ensure greater economic security and stability in their lives as they transition from the public school system and into adulthood.
We have even listed some of the countries in the world that have established such partnerships with such international agencies. We have stated that most countries have developed a conscious and planned approach to educating their people to ensure the greatest possible benefits for their countries in the highly competitive knowledge-based economy that has embraced our world.
We must do no less in this regard. We must ensure that we do all that we can to assist our children to serve the present age. We need a national education development plan. It must be public so that we can all see the role that public education will play in preparing our children to take their places in the emerging needs of the country and one which engenders ownership amongst the general populace.
To return to my earlier remarks, it is no less critical to move towards the development of a National Education and Training Plan, which addresses the needs for the current and future demands of the workforce for skilled workers to extract the most economic benefits for themselves from the knowledge-based global economy.
Given the changes in skill demands and the dramatic demographic shifts in the next decade, the need to increase the skills and credentials of our workforce has never been as urgent as it is today. Here is an opportunity to assist our people to leverage their earning capacity through up-grading their skills and qualifications. In doing so, they may even be able to live Just Over Broke and find more meaningful opportunities for themselves and those who rely on their labour.
This knowledge-based global economy will also provide unparalleled opportunities to propel entrepreneurs towards self-employment and greater level of self-reliance and economic gain. But some will require the assistance of a national workforce development programme to enable them to gain the skill and or credential to move them forward. What an opportunity we miss if we fail to understand and capitalise on where we are in the history of the world. What an opportunity to provide training and development, which will empower our people to achieve more meaningful and satisfying lives and bring greater economic diversity to our country.
We must bring a more purposive and integrated approach to ensure the most optimal outcome for publicly-funded workforce education and training infrastructure. It may be that we will find that there is currently not enough funding in workforce education and training programmes both to build the infrastructure and to provide the amount of training necessary to meet the growing needs the business community.
It may be that funding is not equitably distributed or that we are not deriving the greatest outcome benefits from where the funding is currently being allocated. That is why we said that we will have to improve accountability; eliminate duplication through programme consolidation; enhance the role of employers in the national workforce system and increase our overall sense of innovation and flexibility.Neville E. Darrell JP, MP is the Shadow Minister for Education and Training
