Matching
Education and Labour: Investing in Human Capital
Aspiration
During
the Summit Conference of 23 and 24 March 2000, the European Union
announced their aspiration
to make Europe’s information economy the world’s most competitive
and dynamic. Their motto in this undertaking is “towards a more
digitally literate European population”. The insufficient number of
digitally literate individuals in the workforce, however, poses a threat
to this aspiration. The Dutch government, in its turn, has set its
sights on advancing to the forefront of Europe’s ICT sector. To
accomplish that, the government will have to ensure that the average
member of the Dutch workforce acquires
knowledge of and skills in ICT. The number of ICT experts will
also have to increase dramatically to achieve the growth envisioned.
These
aspirations have given rise to certain essential questions, especially
as regarding the issue of education. The most important of these are
outlined here. What role do (large) cities play in the ICT sector’s
hectic field of influence? How can different government authorities,
educational institutions, market players, the public and the business
community help to improve harmonization between education and the labour
market? And what are the most important instruments available for this
purpose? How can these efforts also be linked to urban policy? And how
can urban policy be reinforced from the European perspective? By pooling
the expertise and commitment of different participants, we hope to
establish a clearer picture
of these issues during this conference.
Parallel
sessions: two themes
As
stated clearly above, we must work towards improving digital literacy in
the population at large. With this basic aim in mind, all participants
must develop a clear idea of what future education should entail, as
well as a vision of how to integrate ICT applications into primary and
higher education. And that undertaking is the first focal theme of the
parallel session.
The
second theme deals more extensively with the urgent shortage of
adequately trained ICT professionals. This is an alarming development
and one that can have detrimental impact on growth in the ICT sector.
One of the most important instruments in creating a lasting solution to
this problem is a greater investment of effort in education.
Introducing
parallel session chairwoman:
Yvonne van Rooy, President of Tilburg University
Yvonne van Rooy studied law at Utrecht
University. On graduating, she accepted a post as Deputy Secretary for
European Integration at the Netherlands Christian Federation of
Employers in The Hague. In 1984, she was elected to the European
Parliament, where she worked primarily on trade policy, economic affairs
and monetary matters.
On 30 October 1986, she was elected as State Secretary for Economic
Affairs. In that post, she was responsible for foreign commerce. On 14
September 1989, she entered the Lower House of the States General (as a
member of the Christian Democratic Alliance). Slightly over a year
later, on 28 September 1990, she was re-elected as State Secretary for
Economic Affairs and remained in that office until 22 August 1994. From
17 May to 1 September 1997, Ms Van Rooy served a second term in the
Lower House as a representative of the Christian Democratic Alliance.
She also holds many additional public offices.
Theme
1:
Integrating ICT (applications) in education - towards digital literacy
The
growing trend throughout numerous sectors in today’s labour market is
to take knowledge of and skills in ICT for granted. And that trend that
will continue in the future. For this reason,
it is crucial that we foster familiarity with ICT from the earliest
possible phase in education, starting in primary education. By
incorporating ICT into education, we can increase digital literacy. And
that, in turn, could prompt more students in higher education to prepare
for careers in the ICT sector.
Cities also stand to gain by using ICT
applications: ICT can improve the quality of urban school systems,
enhancing their appeal. It can also result in swifter and more frequent
contact between schools and other sectors either within or beyond city
limits. The potential for links with - say - cultural and other
institutions are promising (content). ICT can thus facilitate the
establishment of new urban networks.
Numerous
large-scale, as well as smaller, projects and initiatives have been
launched in the Netherlands’ education system to encourage the use of
ICT. Most of these were introduced locally and are funded by government
subsidies. Some are being carried out in cooperation with commercial
enterprises. The projects range from training programmes for teachers,
to educational software development, the development of adequate
teaching programmes and hardware accessibility programmes.
Þ
During
the parallel session, we intend to examine in depth the status quo as
concerning the impact of ICT on primary and secondary education. Based
on our findings, we will define the tasks and options that we actually
face in regard to ICT as government authorities, educational
institutions and other partners. Subsequently, we will try to determine
what role the key partners will play and what instruments will be
available to them in fulfilling their tasks.
Þ
Technology
education specialist, Willem Broere, has agreed to lead the session
towards the questions at hand and set the discussion into motion with
his introductory talk. An extract of his presentation is included below.
We would like to invite you to participate in this discussion in the
Forum section of this web-site and inform us of examples of successful
projects that you have encountered.
@
skills: the real challenge!
“Learning
profiles” and “establishing your profile”: maintaining the balance
Willem
Broere
New
media, such as the Internet and interactive television, are fast gaining
ground in our daily lives. This development can be traced to a parallel
undercurrent in society, that of “living just in time”. As the
public and consumers, we expect made-to-measure service - service
tailored to meet our needs at work, at home and in our free time.
New
media have accelerated that trend, and - due to their characteristic
traits - have added a new dimension to it. Their omnipresence [in a
round-the-clock economy] has slowly eroded the monuments built up in
previous industrial eras.
"Schools”
are one such monument.
Long gone are the days in which education focused on training “professionals.” Broad-based schools, a newly emerging phenomenon in the Netherlands, are a prime illustration of the dilemma that has emerged.
-
The tasks once fulfilled by schools are now being interwoven into community life.
-
-
Parental and community involvement has increased in determining the contents of school programmes.
The
staggering growth of the Internet has played an enormous role in tearing
down school walls. (In fact, the number of users aged 16 to 30 in the
Netherlands has multiplied by six in just the past few months). This
same astounding growth, however, poses a threat…
As
yet, the average school programme makes little use of the potential
advantages of new media. Even the school programmes that actually use
computers and different computer applications are usually replacing the
old approach to education with a new variation of the same: old wine in
new skins.
Thus,
the great dilemma facing us over the next few years is not so much the
presumed social gap between the “privileged” and the
“disadvantaged”. Rather, it is the menacing divide between the
traditional system of education and the digital reality in society.
The
government has responded by “investing” in hardware. Although that
may “score” quite a few points in the political arena, it is merely
a small part of the solution and the easiest at that.
If
we fail to shift our focus swiftly to digital content and the
accompanying “dynamic learning environment,” educational programmes
will essentially remain unchanged and the divide between these
programmes and society will only widen despite the influx of computers
and increasing subscriptions to the Internet.
Research
has taught us that the keys to implementing new media lie in exploring,
charting and applying the skills that accompany new media. We have
dubbed these the “@” skills in a research project entitled MeduLeren
(“MEDucation”), which was set up in a cooperative venture between
@PS, the University of Louvain and the University of Gent.
We
will discuss these skills more extensively during the parallel session.
Using various rules of thumb, we will also demonstrate how efforts can
focus on recognizing and introducing these skills in Public-Private
Partnerships between national/regional authorities, schools and the
business community.
Introducing
Willem Broere
Willem
Broere is a technology education specialist at @PS, the ICT expertise
section of the Algemeen
Pedagogisch Studiecentrum (general educational studies centre) in
Utrecht, the Netherlands. For years, he has been intrigued by the
phenomenon of new media. His work in this field has varied from
supervising the introduction and implementation of computer programs in
training institutes for carnival and circus proprietors to managing a
large-scale project to introduce computers in primary and special
education. Entitled the COMENIUS-PRINT,
this latter project spanned a five-year period from 1989 to 1994.
Mr.
Broere is currently the coordinator for InterActie!,
a Public-Private partnership between the government and major
educational publishers in the Netherlands. This cooperative venture will
continue until 2001 and will produce 23 state-of-the-art software programs to teach young children language and math skills.
The project was also set up to offer teacher training and assistance.
Over the past year, all primary schools throughout the Netherlands
received what was called THE PACKAGE: eight multi-media CDROMS to help
teams of teachers choose and implement new media. The project’s final
undertaking is “MEDucation,” i.e. charting and introducing “@”
skills.
Other
interesting cases are
outlined below. To learn more about any of these cases, visit the
web-site listed with the relevant description. Undoubtedly, you have
encountered similar examples in your own city or in the daily course of
your professional activities, examples that would interest our
conference participants. We would be very grateful if you would send us
a description. Simply use the interactive feature in the Forum section
of this web-site, or e-mail us.
Diane,
The Netherlands’ Internet@atlas
Diane
is a national survey of the quality of life conducted by pupils aged
10-15. Their findings are posted on the Internet. Launched in 1999, the
project has been carried out so far by 350 Dutch primary schools. That
number is bound to increase in upcoming years. The project
participants’ research area consists of one square kilometre. They
draw up a comprehensive overview of the use of space in “their”
kilometre, calculating the percentage of space occupied by buildings,
asphalt, nature conservation areas, industrial zones, etc. They also
study the quality of private and professional life, public facilities
and the infrastructure of their respective kilometres. In addition to
the factual overview, the pupils also offer their opinions about
different aspects of the use of land for residential and
employment-related purposes as well as their vision of these aspects in
the near future.
For
more information, visit
The
Hague, home to a virtual city
Joining
forces with two other European cities,
The Hague’s Montessori Lyceum (HML) built a virtual environment
last year for educational purposes. The virtual city is a
three-dimensional application on the Internet. Although the HML did not
develop the application itself, it “bought” a piece of land from an
organization called Active Worlds. The city was then built in what was
primarily a cooperative effort between pupils of the HML and a school in
Petersburg. And that was one of the points of the project: the pupils
themselves were to build the virtual city. Their city has much to offer.
Aside from using “ordinary” Internet features, such as chatting (in
the form of avatars), the pupils can build entire building complexes.
The HML plans to share its newly acquired expertise with other schools.
In the efforts towards that end, contacts have been sought in Europe.
Moreover, the ICT steering group for education has pledged the HML
support for plans to expand the project in The Hague.
For
more information, visit:
Theme
2:
Deploying
(new) groups of job seekers in ICT vocational education
It
is important in strengthening the vitality of a (large) city to maximize
the employment rate. ICT, an ever-growing sector, offers the necessary
opportunities. Those opportunities can only be put to advantage,
however, if there is a sufficient pool of trained labour. To put it
simply, achieving that goal will require a greater influx of school
pupils, students, job seekers and employed individuals into ICT training
programmes in the near future. On an even shorter term basis, we will
have to tap into (new) target groups who could participate in condensed
ICT training programmes.
The
pressing question here is how can we draw on (new) target groups for
participants in ICT training programmes when potential human resources
for the ICT sector in urban labour markets are fairly limited due to the
number of individuals with lower/inadequate levels of education.
Increasingly,
however, opportunities have opened in the ICT sector for job seekers
with some form of intermediate vocational education. This development is
especially promising for cities as it will enable a percentage of job
seekers on urban labour markets to enter the ICT sector via intermediate
vocational education programmes. It may prove possible to deploy part of
the potential human resources in cities to reduce the shortage problem.
Commissioned
by the Dutch government, the ICT Task Force in the Netherlands has
proposed a series of short-term measures aimed at counterbalancing the
short supply of ICT professionals on the labour market. One of the
projects now underway involves improving ICT training courses in the
intermediate vocational education system. The project’s primary aim is
to train or update the skills of thousands of job seekers in ICT
vocational education. The government, various educational institutions
and the business community are highly involved in the project. It is
important that these three partners each contribute their share in
achieving this goal.
Since
1992, anywhere from 45 to 50 regional educational centres have been
established in the Netherlands. These institutions offer an entire range
of vocational training courses and fall under such different areas of
the education sector as: adult basic education, general adult secondary
education, the dual apprenticeship system and intermediate vocational
education, including ICT programmes.
ROC
de Amerlanden
is one such regional educational centre. Situated in Amersfoort,
this centre offers training courses at different levels and based on
different methods. These range
from introductory ICT courses to ICT intermediate vocational courses and
made-to-measure in-service training courses for companies. The centre
also carries out such integration projects as ICT-aided Dutch courses
for long-time immigrants and re-integration courses.
Þ
During
the parallel session, we intend to examine in depth the status quo in
ICT (vocational) education as relating to ICT-intensive companies. Based
on our findings, we will define the tasks and options that we actually
face in regard to ICT as government authorities, educational
institutions and the business community. Subsequently, we will try to
determine what role these partners will play and what instruments are
available to them in fulfilling their tasks. One key aspect in this
regard is the question of whether potential human resources in cities
can be deployed to reduce the need for labour in the ICT sector and
whether intermediate vocational education programmes can be instrumental
in achieving that.
Þ
Marijke
Herben has agreed to launch the discussion. As the Project Leader, she
will explain the Dutch Task Force project aimed at reinforcing ICT
vocational education programmes and accelerating the influx of (new)
groups of job seekers into those programmes. In her regular post at the
KPN, Ms Herben serves as the Project Manager for a training programme.
She also serves part-time as a Councilwoman in the Municipality of
Zandvoort.
Þ
Practice
case: ICT learning in Ronneby, Sweden
In
addition, Sölve Landén, Information Manager at the Municipality of Ronneby
in Sweden and with long experience of ICT projects, has agreed to hold
a brief talk of interesting training initiatives to enable digital literacy
and to encourage professional skills in ICT. The
Ronneby Municipal Authorities made the transition to intensive use of
ICT almost 15 years ago. The first concretion was the science park Soft
Center, where today about 70 software companies are situated together
with the University of Karlskrona/Ronneby, widely acknowledged for its
ICT training courses and research. Sölve Landén will present a project
where unemployed persons have been identified, trained and engaged as
intermediaries of ICT knowledge to learn preferably SMEs about how to
meet the ICT challenges of the new millennium.
About Sölve Landén
Infocenter,
a learning studio and electronic library of the science park Soft Center
in Ronneby, started in 1989. Sölve Landén was appointed manager. Since
then he has been engaged in efforts aiming to expand people's knowledge
and experiences of applied information technology. Early in the 1990’s
local politicians in Ronneby stated that ICT was to be a citizens' right,
and mr Landén was appointed one of the responsible persons to activate
the process. Development initiatives have subsequently been arranged in
collaboration with the University of Karlskrona/Ronneby, well known for
its IT-profile, or with other private and public organisations. Mr Landén
has been representing the municipality of Ronneby in the steering groups
of such actions focusing on how to stimulate general usage of ICT as well
as on how to meet certain demands of ICT competence.
Sölve Landén and his department are managing the web site and intranet of Ronneby municipality.
Ronneby is well reputed for its information technology initiatives. A number of times Sölve Landén has been engaged by national or international conferences or seminars to inform of the city's experiences in ICT. He has been a local project manager in European R&D-projects since 1996 and has many times represented Ronneby in 'Telecities'. He participated in the preparation of the Fifth Framework Program on behalf of DG XIII in an expert group called 'Government on-line'.
Þ We would like to invite you to participate in this discussion in the Forum section of this web-site and offer us your comments and suggestions. We would also welcome information about successful projects in your city.
Introducing
European Commission representative:
Maruja
Gutierrez Diaz.
As
a unit head in the Multimedia Department at DG Education and Culture, Ms
Diaz has access to information on the state of progress in most European
countries as regarding ICT integration into education and improved
harmonization between ICT education and the labour market.
Interesting
links:
www.en.eun.org/news/ictdev/ictdev.html
www.ceoforum.org
www.rm.com/reports/
www.observetory.com
www.europa.eu.int
www.minez.nl
www.minocw.nl
www.minbzk.nl
www.ronneby.se
www.karlskrona.se