Platform for lifelong learning

Education has taken on a wider meaning. No longer is it looked upon as confined solely to the early years of a person's life when qualifications are sought to enable a smoother passage into the world of employment. The phrase that is being used more commonly is "lifelong education".

This is a continuous process in which those in employment, or, very often, more aptly those seeking re-employment, take a conscious decision to learn new skills that render them more employable or enhance their promotion prospects within their organisation. Even after people retire from full-time employment there is still the need for education, as those who missed out on these opportunities earlier on in life embrace them.

Last September, the National Commission for Higher Education organised a conference titled Skills for the Future. The report on the conference proceedings, just published, revealed a number of trends that will be evident in the local economy over the next decade.

The first is that no fewer than 77,000 new jobs need to be generated partly to make good for those who retire, leaving their jobs vacant, and partly to ensure that the labour force's activity rate increases from 59 per cent today to 70 per cent. Over 34,000 people from the inactive or active population need to upgrade their skills to higher qualification levels.

What is more astounding is that 63,500 persons need to update their skills from low to medium qualifications. And the proportion of low-skilled workers needs to fall drastically. From an education perspective, the NCHE said this implied that the number of students aged 16 to 24 who decided to further their education needed to increase by 40 per cent from 31,000 students to 43,500 students per year and funding had to rise by a corresponding percentage and would amount to €140 million within seven years. With this in mind, it is timely that the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport recognised the need to further promote lifelong learning and has decided to organise the National Careers Convention 2009 between tomorrow and Saturday at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, Valletta.

The audience targeted for this convention falls into three categorie: There are those who may want to further their education, either in Malta or abroad; there are those who wish to "shop around" to see what careers are available and want to show an interest in that particular line and the last category is for those who are also in employment but may be on the look-out for a change in their career.

Those who attend the National Careers Convention 2009 will be able to attend a number of brief presentations that deal with highly relevant topics of employment, skills, qualifications and specific career paths. Apart from these presentations, during which questions can be asked, one-to-one advice can be sought directly from the Education Department's guidance and counselling Services section.

All this will be enhanced by the distribution of information through representatives of a large number of government and private entities. Such a convention will surely point the way ahead to a number of recommendations that emerged from the NCHE conference.

Among these is the need to address skills gaps with the real economy - the world of work; the need to develop a more responsive education sector and the need to create synergies between education, business and government development agencies. Yes, guidance services in schools and further education may need to be more professional and certainly more information through research and the generation of statistics will help to develop foresight capacity to identify trends and anticipate change.

Ultimately, a careers convention is about creating the right networking opportunities and I am confident that this year's edition will go a long way in promoting this positive networking among the target audience.