Workplace learning starts at school

A new strategy from the National Centre for Partnership and Performance (NCPP), is aiming to boost learning in the workplace. The benefits are clear, but the rigidity of our education system may not help. Louise Holdenreports

Ireland's education system may have played a key role in our economic miracle, but the school system may now be holding up progress in some key areas.

The National Centre for Partnership and Performance (NCPP), which is charged with improving the low levels of workplace learning in Ireland, has just launched its strategy for the next three years, and change will have to start in schools, says its director, former teacher Lucy Fallon-Byrne.

The Government has demonstrated its commitment to the concept, through the establishment of a Forum on the Workplace of the Future and an investment of €9 million to support workplace innovation including innovative learning and training.

Enticing your employees to keep learning impacts the bottom line, as well as the feel-good factor, according to research, so the NCPP is hoping that the strategy will get Irish companies hooked on education. Research published by the University of Limerick last year showed that progressive human resources management, including structured workplace learning, added €50,000 per employee to company revenue in a sample of 165 Irish companies. Supportive employers also enjoy a reduction in staff turnover of 16 per cent, according to the study.

However, another study carried out by the NCPP and the ESRI in 2004 found that only 41 per cent of companies in Ireland had implemented training and development policies for employees. The challenge, according to the NCPP's Conor Leeson, is to convince companies that spending on staff development is an investment rather than a cost. This lesson will be hard to sell to SMEs, where investment in staff training is lowest.

"The workforce needs shaking up, and the Government, perhaps more so than any other government in Europe, is responding to this need. In 2003, the NCPP was asked to establish a Forum on the Workplace of the Future. We received contributions from all the major stakeholders in business and education and the same message kept coming through - soft skills are required in the workplace, but are not being taught in the schools."

Soft skills, as the name suggests, are difficult to pin down. They involve nebulous qualities such as creativity, adaptability and communication. If they are hard to define, they may prove even harder to teach.

The new primary curriculum, launched in 1999, is designed to foster such skills, and in principle it does call on pupils to exercise a wider array of abilities than the three Rs. However, a 2003 review of the primary curriculum found that many teachers were still relying heavily on textbooks and traditional teaching approaches rather than embracing active learning, circle time and other radical elements of the new curriculum.

The situation in second-level education may be even less relevant to 21st-century learning and working, says Fallon-Byrne. "We need to continuously change the curriculum to make it more relevant." Fallon Byrne, who worked with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) before coming to the NCPP, roundly supports the curriculum reform process in Ireland but fears it may not be filtering through to classrooms. "What is envisaged in curriculum reform is not always realised in schools, and particularly in the textbooks. We need to have much closer collaboration between the NCCA and the school-book publishers if the aims of the curriculum are to be implemented. Chapter-to-chapter learning is not in the spirit of many of the new curricula introduced at second level.

"According to our research, Ireland is not great on workplace learning, and those who are least likely to avail of training as adults are those who have had a negative experience of schooling when they were young. Workplace training is strongly linked to previous educational qualification and what happens in formal education is perpetuated in the workplace. This is what we refer to as the 'opportunities divide'."

Fallon-Byrne believes that presenting children with "doorsteps of books" can put them off the learning process, especially if they come from disadvantaged backgrounds where literacy is an issue. This experience of alienation from the education process can cut people off from education for life, and this is having a serious impact in the majority of workers in Ireland who are not availing of workplace learning.

The responsibility for bringing Irish workers to learning lies with many agents, from early childhood educators right through to employers, says Fallon-Byrne.

This month the NCPP launched its Strategy for Change, Innovation and Partnership in Irish Workplaces. Speaking at the launch the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, outlined three priorities for the period 2007 to 2010. The first is to support and encourage innovation at workplace level, the second is to improve capacity for change in the system and the third is to enhance the quality of workplace life. Practical measures to usher in these changes, according to the Taoiseach, include the development of a sector-based approach, which includes education and health as well as business. Some €9 million has been committed to a three-year workplace innovation fund to provide support, through Enterprise Ireland, to companies hoping to improve their workplace learning structures.

No mention was made at this launch of increases in funding for the education system at other levels, despite the critical roles that early, primary and secondary education play in all later learning. The new strategy is a very welcome development, but is only the beginning.

"There's no point in developing a national strategy without referring back to the education system. We remain stubbornly in the middle to lower ranks of spending in education. We have to build capacity across all sectors," says Fallon-Byrne.