FUNDAMENTAL changes planned for schools next year will enable Northern Ireland students to better compete for jobs on a global playfield, according to a leading educationalist.
Avril Hall Callaghan, General Secretary of the Ulster Teachers’ Union, said the introduction of the Entitlement Framework will offer pupils a wider choice of subjects and skills – vocational and academic – at GCSE and A-level.
“The Entitlement Framework coming in next September will help equip young people with the skills and qualifications they need as it guarantees them the right to a more varied range of subject choices,” she said.
“We are facing a global economic crisis and it will require new progressive thinking if economies are to recover. That thinking must start now with the children we are educating to take the country forward and applied subjects must be respected in their own right.
“Children who want to pursue this direction should be able to do so from much earlier in their schooling as opposed to being locked into academic subjects which hold no interest or future for them, with all the attendant problems that can cause, for both them and the teacher.
“We only have to look at the education systems in the economically buoyant BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – at the minute to see that this more vocational approach in schools plays a key part in their success.
“We are competing now with these nations and we must give our young people the tools to succeed in a rapidly-changing world. A well-educated and a highly skilled workforce will be crucial to Northern Ireland’s economic recovery.
“The key is in strengthening the links between the world of commerce and business and education – and the best way to do that is by supplying employers with suitably trained and qualified workers.”
By 2015 schools will have to offer access to a minimum of 24 courses at key stage four and 27 at post-16, and at least one third of these courses should be general and at least one third applied.
FUNDAMENTAL changes planned for schools next year will enable Northern Ireland students to better compete for jobs on a global playfield, according to a leading educationalist.
Avril Hall Callaghan, General Secretary of the Ulster Teachers’ Union, said the introduction of the Entitlement Framework will offer pupils a wider choice of subjects and skills – vocational and academic – at GCSE and A-level.
“The Entitlement Framework coming in next September will help equip young people with the skills and qualifications they need as it guarantees them the right to a more varied range of subject choices,” she said.
“We are facing a global economic crisis and it will require new progressive thinking if economies are to recover. That thinking must start now with the children we are educating to take the country forward and applied subjects must be respected in their own right. “Children who want to pursue this direction should be able to do so from much earlier in their schooling as opposed to being locked into academic subjects which hold no interest or future for them, with all the attendant problems that can cause, for both them and the teacher.
“We only have to look at the education systems in the economically buoyant BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – at the minute to see that this more vocational approach in schools plays a key part in their success.
“We are competing now with these nations and we must give our young people the tools to succeed in a rapidly-changing world. A well-educated and a highly skilled workforce will be crucial to Northern Ireland’s economic recovery.
“The key is in strengthening the links between the world of commerce and business and education – and the best way to do that is by supplying employers with suitably trained and qualified workers.”
By 2015 schools will have to offer access to a minimum of 24 courses at key stage four and 27 at post-16, and at least one third of these courses should be general and at least one third applied.
