19/01/2012

Jobs, Schemes and Political Backbone

When I left school without the A levels that I needed to fulfil my academic dreams I was put on a job creation programme in my local library. I loved the scheme whilst it lasted!

I learned more in those six months than I had learned in a previous lifetime of school. There was something almost magical in handling so many books. Even without reading them, just stamping a book with this book is the property of Gwynedd Council and knowing on which shelf to place it gave me new information about the latitude of human knowledge, experience and insight. It was probably the most influential six months of my life!

But it was still cheap, and useless, labour!

It was a scheme that would never have allowed me to become a librarian or to get even the lowest job in a library. After six months of infatuation with the process I was kicked out because my term had ended, and some other person was inducted to the joys of librarianship in my stead with the same non chance of having a career in the library service.

Pointless really!

Given the resignations of the Apprenticeship Tsars I hope that the Westminster Government will look again at the meaning of apprenticeship and give young people the hope of gaining employment as electricians, plumbers, mechanics, librarians etc, rather than doing what Mrs Thatcher did – dangling the smell of such jobs under their noses in the knowledge that those jobs were never going to be available to them!

But I doubt it – getting kids through schemes, in order to keep them off the streets for a few months is easy politics – giving them meaningful apprenticeships that will lead to lifelong skills and employment is a real challenge that the ConDem Government is too frightened to contemplate.

3 comments:

  1. "But I doubt it – getting kids through schemes, in order to keep them off the streets for a few months is easy politics – giving them meaningful apprenticeships that will lead to lifelong skills and employment is a real challenge that the ConDem Government is too frightened to contemplate."

    Yeah 'cos setting up meaningful apprenticeship schemes is easy, isn't it? And its just that those damn ConDems would prefer to leave our young people on the scrapheap, yeah?

    Nonsense as always.

    Real apprenticeship schemes require a massive re-organisation of the education system. As in Germany you'd need streaming at around 12-13 years so that those who are academically gifted can be prepared for university and those which are not can be prepared for a trade. Think the teaching unions will allow that?

    Once kids have been pushed through a one-size-fits-all academic-oriented school system and are bored and can't wait to leave at 16 its already too late to get them re-interested in education.

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  2. Putting kids through schemes doesn't just keep them off the streets, it keeps them off the unemployment statistics too. All politicians want to hear thet 'unemployment has fallen' and that there are far fewer young people 'Not in Employment, Education or Training' (NEETS). I've come to realiese that in politics perception is far more important than reality.

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  3. Realistically we should abandon the automatic shift to college and then Uni, just maintain that for those with the sufficient grades to go further. Colleges around this area they have to teach many kids basic literacy at 16+ ridiculous. what happens the first 12 years ? obviously not a lot ! I started work 15 and a half, started apprenticeship at 16, didn't do me any harm and still had the opportunity of further education at night school and/or a day off work. It is clear most college and Uni courses in Wales are useless anyway as employers won't recognise them..

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