Plan to have 1,500 ICT graduates every year

A Cisco Academy was launched at St Michael's Foundation yesterday, a move that will enhance the information communication technology curriculum taught at this secondary school.

The school will integrate the IT Essentials curriculum in the full-time ICT curriculum taught in Forms III, IV, and V, a model, a spokesman said, other secondary schools should take note of.

The academy, launched by IT Minister Austin Gatt, is the first in a series of five new Cisco academies in Malta.

The first Cisco Academies opened in 2002 at the Swatar Training Centre, the University of Malta and the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology, providing courses for about 700 individuals to date.

Dr Gatt emphasised that today's job market was challenging, and understanding workplace demands while ensuring that students were ready for the workplace was the key to success.

Cisco is an international ICT company that invests significantly in developing opportunities for students and graduates to get the real work experience through the curricula that it develops, and the academies it sets up.

"Our 2004-2006 National ICT Strategy had set the target to change the educational set-up in our country to complete the training of 500 ICT specialists every year. When we started our efforts in 2002, we had 141 graduates; this year we prepared 420," he said.

Dr Gatt said the ministry was shifting its ambitions and working on trebling the current rate of graduations from these training programmes - up to 1,500 students per annum by 2009.

"We need this to meet the ever-rising demand for jobs we are creating with the investment we are attracting," he said.