Apprenticeships Need to Be Genuine

HELEN CLARK is absolutely right when she says New Zealand will not stay a First World nation without the right training, skills and education for the workforce. Already there is talk of employers providing on the job remedial training in reading, writing and maths because so many workers are deficient in this area. Experts believe the literacy level of 800,000 workers is so low that they would have trouble copying printed information to an order form. Think about that. The Government’s solution to the problem seems to be to ask employers to teach those basics that should have been instilled at school. The mind boggles. Apparently that bombshell is expected to be dropped in this year’s Budget. In short, a large chunk of the workforce is, at best, poorly educated or — shudder — too thick to be of much use.

Tertiary Education Minister Pete Hodgson is spooked. He reported to Cabinet this week NZ does not have enough skilled workers to boost productivity increases which are so crucial for driving GDP. Indeed, recent GDP gains have been made on the backs of Kiwis working some of the longest hours in the developed world, and not on gains in productivity.

Phil O’Reilly, the chief executive of Business New Zealand, knows we have a problem with reading, writing and arithmetic in the workplace, but he thinks the proposal to turn the smoko room into a classroom could result in a bureaucratic nightmare for employers. He believes on-the-job schooling is a good idea in principle, but he says employers who have already tried this idea ran into problems with costs and workers being stigmatised by others when they asked for help.

It is a good point and one that brings us back to Miss Clark’s initiative to raise the school leaving age to 18. It sounds good in theory, but teachers have been lukewarm in response. Under the scheme, young people would remain at school, or in some kind of education or training, until 18. Schools would place students in “youth apprenticeships” in an industry of their choice. The scheme is better than having bored kids loitering in the streets, but teachers are understandably leery of teaching young adults who would rather be anywhere but school. They see potential for more disruption in the classroom, but there’s also a danger those pupils on the apprenticeship course could become stigmatised, much like the second year fifths of yesteryear. We reckon a genuine apprenticeship that paid good wages — possibly subsidised by the state — would be better than forcing kids to remain at school. That way the needs of industry would be met and productivity gains would flow through to the domestic economy.

(c) 2008 Daily News; New Plymouth, New Zealand. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.