joi, 5 octombrie 2017

Module 6: Benefits of external school to work programs


Module Objectives
The learning objectives of Module 6 are:
  • To learn about the types of available school-to-work programs and where to find them;
  • To learn how to guide students towards school-to-work programs.

6.1 Business and education collaboration

In Module 5, we saw how STEM professionals play an important role in informing and guiding students to STEM careers, as well as some good practices that a STEM role model or mentor should put to use. In this module, we will zoom out and look at the big picture of such collaborations, and explore in more detail what it means for education and business to collaborate.
For a first taste of this concept, we can watch the following video of Julie Baxter, Vice President, Support at CA Technologies outlining some of the main benefits of collaboration between schools and business:
Very few countries manage to achieve high levels of collaboration between schools and industry. Moreover, this relationship is not often achieved solely through a guided, school-centered or policy-directed approach.
The Education to employment: Getting Europe’s youth into work report by McKinsey & Company (Mourshed, Patel, & Suder, 2014) points out there is a “failure of employers, education providers, and young people to understand one another”. Although education providers are confident that students are being adequately prepared for the transition from school to a job, in reality, employers have been continuously lamenting that they do not find workers with the right skills.
Emphasising that youths are not to blame, the report goes on to outline three hurdles that one faces in the path from education to employment (E2E): (1) enrolling in postsecondary education (2) building the right skills and (3) finding a suitable job. Overall, the report mentions that students face great financial costs to pursue higher education options. It also stresses they are not learning enough (or not learning the right soft skills at school) and that they lack support and career information in their transition to work.
So, how can we solve this? One of the solutions proposed in the McKinsey & Company report is a stronger collaboration between education providers and employers. This can be achieved through designing school curricula together, engaging professionals in teaching, creating opportunities for students to experiment with real work in companies, and setting up training academies by larger companies. We will explore all of these throughout this module.
In the videos below, we will see an example of how industry in Portugal, more precisely the Óbidos Technological Park, is taking a first step in bridging the STEM skill gap and working together with students to enrich their skill set. In the next section, we will see some first practical steps we can take towards engaging businesses in school activities.


Activity 1: Read the article Education to employment: Getting Europe’s youth into work and study Exhibit 1: Few young people have a successful journey to employment. There are three dimensions you need to look at: Access (vertical axis), Desire for employability (horizontal axis) and Degree of success (4 segments, from green to blue). Based on this graph, where do you think  students in your school are placed? What is their level of access and desire for employability? What are some actions you can take to improve the situation?

6.2 Connect with the community

Sometimes, the actions one has available as a head of school or career counsellor are quite limited, in particular when the wider educational context (tight curricula, limited school resources, scheduling incompatibilities, etc.) does not allow much room for creativity or for developing innovative activities and programmes for students.
Fortunately, there are always simple measures which can be taken to secure students as much career readiness as possible. In terms of business and education collaboration, a first place to look at is the community itself. What are the organisations, the people you can bring to your school, and who will enrich lessons and connect students to real work opportunities?
In Community Partners: Making Student Learning Relevant (2016), Edutopia presents a great case study of a school in the United States where the head of school and teachers work with community partners to enrich student learning and to give them real-life skills.
In this case study, community partners are defined as “an expert in the community or somebody who can help us take our learning from the classroom and apply it into the real world". The exact term used to define them is “learning partner”. The school utilises these learning partners to enrich lessons and to co-teach, but also to help teachers learn from experts, through individual talks, before giving a certain lesson. Another way these partners are utilised is to give authenticity to lessons and to connect students to experts in the specific area students are practicing or learning about during a particular lesson.
So, how do you reach these learning partners? The article suggests several ways: from Googling the nearest expert, to collaborating with parents or connecting with teachers from other schools. More interesting approaches are (for the head of school or career counsellor) to:
  • Join local talks or workshops: networking and learning what others are doing and how you can tap into their expertise is a great strategy;
  • Contact local museums, government agencies, local expertise institutions (which usually have an Education Department).

Activity 2: Having read these steps for connecting with your local community, share some ways in which you can connect with the business community in your town or city: what professionals can you bring to your school and how can you involve them?

6.3 School-to-work transition

An interesting takeaway from Mapping youth transitions in Europe by Eurofund (the tripartite EU agency providing knowledge to assist in the development of better social, employment- and work-related policies) is that “those countries with quicker and more successful school-to-work transitions are those where young people leave home earlier. In this regard, seven common patterns were identified among Member States. At one end of the spectrum, the ‘Nordic’ and ‘Apprenticeship’ (Austria and Germany) models are characterized by a more rapid transition to adulthood and a quicker transition from school to work. At the other end of the spectrum, in the ‘Eastern European’ and ‘Mediterranean’ models, difficult and problematic school-to-work transitions are associated with very slow and late transitions to independence and autonomy.”
These discrepancies need to be tackled on various levels. However, the biggest impact can be achieved by large-scale change, either policy-driven or at the school level. As a head of school or career counsellor, there is still plenty you can do to facilitate students' work transitions: specifically, leveraging the steps taken by businesses to cover the skill gap in younger employees by encouraging students to take up training academies provided by companies.
In this manner, and in an effort to invest in training and skill development for their current and future employees, companies (mainly large enterprises) are rolling out various training programmes and initiatives for students and/or graduates to smooth out school-to-work transitions or to develop the skills needed to succeed in the business environment.
Here are two examples of such opportunities which are provided by companies and which students can benefit from:
  • A first opportunity is the one provided by Amgen Scholars, a programme where “undergraduate participants benefit from undertaking a research project under top faculty, being part of a cohort-based experience of seminars and networking events, and taking part in a symposium in their respective region (U.S., Europe or Japan) where they meet their peers, learn about biotechnology, and hear from leading scientists.”
  • Another example is Microsoft’s Careers, which has an entire section dedicated to students and graduates. This section features live events or webinars on how to prepare for a job at Microsoft, international opportunities like apprenticeships, and even high-school summer bootcamps!
How can you search for these kinds of programs? Some practical steps:
  1. Check out which are some of the big industry or corporate players in your town/city/country.
  2. Their organisation should have a department/area allocated to Corporate Social Responsibility (for example, Amgen has the Amgen Foundation, which offers the Amgem Scholars program) or a section on careers, which almost always provides assistance to students/graduates who might be interested in a job with that company (like Microsoft for example). This information should normally be available on the company’s website.
  3. See what types of activities they provide: these can be live activities, like trainings or workshops at their headquarters, or live webinars. If they offer extracurricular study programs (like an Academy), you can look into their aims, objectives, conditions and timeline.
  4. Facilitate the connection with the teachers in your school so they can use these activities in the classroom. This can be accomplished in one-on-one discussions, in staff meetings, or by directing them to that website.

Activity 3: Are there any training opportunities or companies in your country providing programmes from which the teachers of your school could learn and which they could employ for their students?

6.4 Case study: Internship placement in Portugal

We will now look at a case study of a secondary, vocational school in Portugal, which collaborates with a local company, OGMA, to offer students the opportunity to be placed in internships during their years of study. Although this is a particular case, where the school is mandated to provide these internships, it is nonetheless a good example of the benefits of such placements.


Activity 4: What do you think is one advantage and one disadvantage of such an internship?

6.5 Bibliography







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