SOME months ago a contributor to Education & Living argued that, like youth being wasted on the young, work experience was wasted on Transition Year students - and that it should instead be reserved for PLC students who would better appreciate it and profit from it. Understandably this opinion drew a swift and angry reaction from teachers and parents of Transition Year students. For, work experience is an integral and most important part of the Transition Year programme and, indeed, a very popular element with most students.
Since Transition Year became available generally some three years ago, thousands of young people have gone into offices, factories and retailing outlets, to experience the world of work, learn social and inter personal skills and help them decide on their future career choices. Work experience is a valuable educational activity when students are properly prepared for the placement, where the placement is well chosen and where time is allocated for proper debriefing.
Work experience is an integral part of PLC courses as well and an element of the Leaving Cert Applied and the Leaving Cert Vocational programmes. Recently the Department of Education's Transition Year Support Team has been co operating with the support teams for these programmes to produce a set of guidelines for schools and employers, addressing key issues such as timing of placements and student induction.
Some schools arrange placements for their students. Others expect students to make their own arrangements - in which case parents usually are the ones who have to do the arranging. Whether it's parents or teachers, they must bear in mind the importance of selecting a company or an employer suitable for a particular child.
Too often, in their desperation to find a placement, a shy, unconfident student is placed in a big, noisy organisation in which she or he (often boys are less mature at Transition Year) feels completely inadequate and unhappy. Or, in desperation, when experience is difficult to find, students are placed in dull jobs, such as stacking supermarket shelves, where they learn little and interact less with other people - not that there is anything wrong with stacking shelves if they can learn about other aspects of the grocery business as well.
Work placements could not take place without the co operation and understanding of employers and some really interesting initiatives have been thrown up by the experience. One example is the Tallaght Partnership in Co Dublin, where the local Chamber of Commerce has come together with seven local schools to provide organised and varied programmes of work experience. Similar initiatives have developed in other areas.
FOR their part, one of the biggest problems employers experience is the fact that many to do work experience in a fairly concentrated period - usually February and March - although some do try to spread it over other weeks.
With this concentration, many employers find themselves taking in up to six 15 and 16 year olds on a number of weeks in February or March, which is unfair to them and to the students. Could schools not try to spread the choice of weeks for work experience right over the Transition Year, giving employers an opportunity to spend more time with their young visitors and allowing students to experience more of the work and the life they have come to learn about?
