Dear Editor,
Referring to it as a “shared responsibility”, the expert panel set up by the Premier of Ontario, Canada, recently reported on how to prepare workers for the jobs of today and tomorrow, especially the critical ‘knowledge- and technology-based’ jobs.
The report identified six key areas for serious consideration and relevant action. I itemize these below for consideration by our own Guyanese policy-makers with the hope that they find some resonance with them which would hopefully lead to more concerted local intervention and action:
- Building a stronger partnership between educators and employers: Employers, educators, labour leaders and governmental functionaries should work together to find solutions for experiential learning and competency development and to address mismatches between demand for and supply of the required skills.
- Increasing access to job market information: The relevant functionaries/ agencies must work together for the creation of a national system to give employers and job-seekers better access to information about current and future job openings and anticipated skills requirements.
- Expanding opportunities for learning by experience: Encourage and fund more student placements so that every student completes at least one ‘experiential learning opportunity’ before graduating from secondary school and another during tertiary education.
- Promoting traditional and non-traditional career paths: Increase students’ exposure to various options in the arts, sciences, engineering, technology, skilled trades as well as entrepreneurship.
- Investing in human capital: Launch programmes to support training in the workplace and encourage large employers to share successful training programmes with small and medium-sized enterprises.
- Closing gaps in skills and competencies: Find ways to teach and recognize the skills that students must learn such as teamwork, problem solving, personal relationships, entrepreneurial spirit; also develop programmes for groups which are under-represented in the workplace to allow them better access to employment opportunities.
Guyana’s Ministries of Education and Labour (oops, I am still not au fait with the new name!), trade unions, employers and employers’ organizations, boards of industrial, technical and vocational training and institutions of higher learning should consider the above pointers with a view to deciding how relevant and useful they might be for our own situation and needs.
Yours faithfully,
Nowrang Persaud
