... says the Daily Telegraph, reporting a survey of 1,000 employers by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. It's not surprising that the number of firms expecting to employ young people straight from school at 16 or 18 is decreasing - that's a simple consequence of them not employing many new workers at all. But the fact that employers are saying that teenagers are 'not employable' at all gives great cause for concern. The CIPD says that there is a perception among companies that school leavers lacked basic workplace skills, such as good customer service or communication skills.
Having worked for many years on school-based vocational education, from TVEI onward, I can only echo the value of work experience and the benefits of schools and employers working together. Certainly all my children have benefited directly and explicitly from such engagement. And of course we need to asses and value the skills and achievements that we want to promote - 'real' communication, 'real' mathematics. (But other academic achievement is not valueless; at the least, it demonstrates that people can learn.)
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