From A Ferrari To A Cardboard Box And Back Again
Matching subjects at school to career aspirations is a bit of a lottery. In the past careers were mapped out virtually at birth. Sons and daughters were heavily influenced by the jobs held by their parents. Now many jobs have emerged that didn’t exist when a child started school. Subject selection and specialisation have become educational games in their own right.
At best a child has the ambition to go to university. Prompted by parental, sibling and peer pressure this activity allows a little more time to decide. Many children still have no idea of the final career even when they graduate. This is not necessarily lack of ambition but the result of a bewildering element of choice. The emergence of global markets and the phenomenal pace of technology have changed the job scene immeasurably in the last ten years.
Many jobs now open to graduates never existed when they started their degrees. Traditional safe havens have disappeared. Manufacturing, the backbone of Britain since the industrial revolution, has shrunk to a shadow of its former glory. Even if it is “made in the UK†inevitably it contains components made in the Far East. But the dynamics of the world economy could reverse this. China is also suffering. 67,000 companies have become bankrupt in the six months to September 2008 with two million Chinese workers becoming redundant as a result. It is predicted the downturn in world demand will see 33% of the small to medium sized companies remaining go bankrupt in the second quarter of 2009. Manufacturing in some form could return to the UK!
And who could have predicted the staggering collapse of the financial market and the implications of the follow through. With hindsight we claim we should have spotted the likelihood, but some clever people made a catastrophic error of judgement despite their motivation and experience. Perhaps the maths games involved need redefining.
The regulatory control needed for the future may even see an emergence of a new career as international financial regulators or greed invigilators! The world is changing so rapidly we need to perhaps rethink educational routes to give our children the best option. Universities can help to provide advice to overcome short sightedness in subject selection. Universities criticise that many children are selecting soft options to maximise points.
The rush for media studies etc needs replacing with more resilient options and avoid specialism’s that quickly evaporate. Similarly we need to service areas currently starved of resource, such as the sciences.
Teaching resources needs retuning. Uncertainties over career choice cloud the subject selection procedures. Points that were planned to open doors may not now open the ideal door. Jobs open at the start of the equation may have disappeared during the schooling journey. Perhaps we need to give children a better and more flexible deal. The international baccalaureate seems to be more relevant but not favoured. We need a more relevant, far reaching option that can withstand the dramatic changes we will undoubtedly see over the next 20 years.
Alistair Owens Keen2learn
