Initial TUI comments on Further Education and Training (FET) strategy.
Comments from Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) Assistant General Secretary Declan Glynn:
“The SOLAS strategy is very work-focussed but education is about providing transferable, broad-based knowledge and skills that have value beyond the marketplace. Education can facilitate getting people back to work but it transcends the labour market. Education is a bigger matter than solely providing skilled workers for employers.
The SOLAS strategy could be regarded as shifting the focus of further education towards meeting skills shortages and skills deficits in the workforce, identified by agencies whose remit is that of supporting and fostering economic recovery and prosperity: it could be regarded as utilitarian and narrow; the championing of training over education. Education and training are complementary activities but they are not the same.
TUI is concerned that SOLAS is pursuing a policy of permitting training courses that cater for the needs of the labour market and withdrawing funding from courses which meet people’s wider education needs but which were not begotten solely of a labour market demand or economic statistic.
TUI is very gravely concerned that future FET provision will be allocated to private organisations established to provide profit for their owners, and for whom the holistic education needs of learners is a distant, lesser priority to “the bottom line”. The public sector, through Ireland’s Education and Training Boards, is synonymous with further education. It is the public sector that has always driven innovation and value for taxpayers’ money in further education provision.
In its focus on accreditation of outputs and evidence-based funding, TUI is concerned that the immediate will supersede the important: that the needs of industry and commerce will over-power the second-chance education needs of individuals. Further education has been about more than providing skills for work and sustainable employment: it is bigger than that. It is about education appropriate to the longer term needs of individuals, families and communities; it is about providing pathways to educational progression.“