Our youngsters who progress through successful secondary education are well known to march on to better jobs and further education. However, there is a significant group which does not complete secondary education and, for some reason, drop out between Form I and Form IV or fail SC. What happens to this group of our society? Who cares for them? What sort of training and jobs do they embrace? My postbag indicates that there is an increasing concern about this group from hundreds of parents, teachers and youngsters themselves. So what can we do? How can we ensure that this group grows up to be responsible citizens with good work ethics and progress through life as well as others ?

This paper attempts to illuminate the concerns that people have about this particular needy group of our society and puts forward a strategy to help parents, local business and teachers to work together to reinforce a successful training programme on apprenticeship and work ethics.

<B>Parent-youth partnership </B>

IVTB must have a strategic plan to cater for the needs of our people. A huge part of this plan must be on how to chart and solidify a partnership with parents and the youth who need vocational education. Through this partnership, IVTB should very carefully and smartly educate parents and the youth that vocational training is not second-class education and is not necessarily for people with fewer abilities. In order to achieve this, IVTB should seek to be under the Tertiary Education Commission umbrella and be able to link up with polytechnics and higher education institutions. So, what can IVTB do? Here are some strategic suggestions:

• IVTB should have a masterplan which maps out how it proposes to work in partnership with parents and local businesses.

• The institution should hold open days for parents and potential students to inform them of its courses and principles.

• Get the parents of all selected students on courses to meet at the beginning of the course, educate them about the process their sons and daughters are about to embark on and their roles so that they feel and become part of the support system. You must catch the parents if you want to educate the youth.

• Introduce parents to workshop leaders like Ton Bouilla so that the local involvement continues.

• IVTB should value the contributions of parents and youth by having Award Ceremonies for students who have completed their courses, award for Best Practical Placement and Supervisor and finally Best Parental Support Prize.

• Use local students who have completed courses as role models to stimulate local interest in IVTB programmes. These achievers must be upheld as winners in our local villages and local councils should hold ceremonies and celebrations for them.

<B>Apprenticeship and supervision </B>

It is indeed reassuring to know that IVTB is making progress and many youngsters have qualified and pursued successful trades. This deserves recognition and applause. It appears that a group of young people in our society needs the help and support of an apprenticeship system. There is a lot of good work going on in IVTB classrooms but work ethics can be developed much more when there is an apprenticeship and supervision system in place. How can such a system be created? Who should be involved? What procedures can we have to ensure our young people benefit from the system?

Firstly, we must understand that technical and vocational education has four main components:

(1) The technological or mechanical aspects;

(2) The skill of manipulating the technology or machinery;

(3) Learning to work with people;

(4) Provision of Quality Service.

All the above components are imperative if vocational education is to succeed. They should be the core themes of any vocational educational programme. Thus, the theoretical aspects can be taught in the classroom developing the knowledge of the students in applied sciences. However, teachers have to be creative in hammering the relevance of what students learn to the real world, the application of the sciences and the prospects of a knowledge driven vocation. It is critical that this relevance is a strong theme throughout the vocational educational curriculum to emphasise authenticity and validity of learning the hard scientific principles which underpin vocational practice.

Without this prominence of relevance, students generally lose interest and this applies more to weaker students. Thus, teachers bear a heavy responsibility in ensuring that what they teach is relevant and not fictitious. This is teaching for reality and teaching for a purpose. That is what motivates vocational students.

The challenge is to retain and sustain this motivation. One proven way of achieving this is through group work with a strong reflective component. In practice, this means group building and group processes must be given greater standing in vocational education. Group strategy must be used to strengthen the students, their confidence, and their beliefs in their abilities and to develop skills in mutual support.

One important aspect of vocational education is that students need a lot of support and teachers cannot be the only source of this support. Peers are sometimes the best source of support and students? abilities must be used and extended. The greatest thing that a teacher can do in the world of vocational education is not only to equip students with a wage-earning skill but also self-confidence and self-belief. If we believe enough in ourselves, we can conquer the world. Regardless of whether we have failed or passed our schooling years.

Apart from group process and group support, an apprenticeship system gives and builds confidence in what the student is learning. Sitting by Nellie or helping Ton Bouilla at the carpentry shop or an apprentice at big firms like Rogers is equally useful. Thus vocational educational curriculum must always be modular with practical placements with local businesses. Without this practical placement opportunity for sitting by Ton Bouilla, vocational education is that much poorer, harder, demotivating and becomes an uphill struggle for both student and teacher.

However, for this type of apprenticeship to work, Ton Bouilla needs to be prepared and supported by IVTB. This preparation of workshop leaders is critical and the following steps are crucial:

• IVTB should have an aggressive but progressive masterplan on Developing Partnerhip with the Local Business Community and be prepared to invest heavily in this approach.

• IVTB needs to move closer to Ton Bouilla and show interest in his skills.

• IVTB should hold local workshops, invite Ton Bouilla and recruit him as a potential supervisor and teacher of practical skills. Everybody likes to be recognised for his/her skills and this process endorses Ton Bouilla?s expertise and will motivate him. Financial incentives to Ton Bouilla could be an additional carrot

• Involve Ton Bouilla in curriculum development because our small workshops have a lot of expertise through experiential learning. This is like accrediting the practical lifetime experiences of Ton Bouilla and this will fill him with self-assurance, appreciation, buoyancy, recognition and a source of satisfaction that he is actually contributing to the development of the youth and the country rather than just working to earn his living.

• Encourage Ton Bouilla to have one or two apprentices for specific periods during the year and IVTB teachers should go out and support Ton Bouilla to help the students and agree on specific skills to be learnt at every stage of the placement. Ton Bouilla should not be left on his own to get on with it but he should have all the assistance and facilities to energise the supervision and apprenticeship system.

• IVTB should have regular evaluation sessions with workshop leaders such as Ton Bouilla to assess achievements, resolve problems that may be occurring, offer asssistance and facilitate their work.

<B>Instilling work ethics</B>

It is important to understand what ethics is and how it is relevant at work. Ethics is about making rational, moral and pragmatic decisions. Work ethics then is the logical, fair and practical decisions that we make to accomplish a given task. This means we have boundaries in behaviour, self-management, respect and commitment to colleagues as well as completing our work at the highest quality within an agreed time frame. How can we inculcate this type of approach to work?

It is a well-known fact that people in general learn by imitating others. This is usually known as role modelling. Thus, vocational students need role models within IVTB classrooms, workshops and role models as supervisors within local businesses. This is the most powerful method of learning. We all know that role modelling begins at home and if children see their parents stealing or fiddling the books, they will learn and adopt stealing and fiddling as a way of life. If parents are alcoholic, then children are likely to be the same. If parents have extra-marital affairs, their children will follow the same path. Because we all look at our parents as our role models from birth. If parents are honest and decent, their offspring follow the same practice. This is how powerful role modelling is. What we see in practice sticks. This is the technique that instructors have used and continue to use successfully in inculcating best practice and good behaviour.

Thus, the responsibility for being role models lies with teachers at IVTB, instructors within local business placements and parents. Work ethics is not something that can be taught through lectures only but it is a tripartite effort. For example, if the teacher is teaching vocational students about time-keeping and he turns up to work or teaching sessions late himself, then he will never be a role model.

We must put into practice what we preach if we want to be role models. Institutions such as IVTB should have this tripartite model as part of all their activities, curricula and practical placements. It is inadequate to educate our youth who have failed CPE or SC within the classroom without the active involvement of parents and local businesses. If IVTB does not have a strong partnership with parents and businesses, then it is only fulfilling one third of its responsibilities. It has to extend far and wide into the local communities to be of service to the youth who may be disillusioned by a temporary set back early in their schooling lives. IVTB has to learn to work with and feed the community with skills and hope as Winston Churchill once said ?There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk (skills and hope) into babies?. This is the strategy that IVTB should energise if we are to rescue our youth from alcoholism, drug addiction, petty theft and vandalism.

So why am I arguing passionately about role modelling in preference to other methods of teaching and learning? It is because role modelling is about doing, about action and about being concrete. The world is divided into two classes of people : those who do things and those who get the credit. Dwight Morrow, a late diplomat, said that we should try to belong to the first class. There is far less competition. This is very true and we should all try to be doers and role modelling needs doers. Our youth need doers to learn from through this apprenticeship system. This approach is further supported by Charles Reade, a novelist in 1814 who said: ?Sow an act and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny.?

Our education system in its entirety and our government systems should encourage parents, teachers and local communities to do things together and only then there will be a merging of goals, aspirations and developmental progress as a Mauritian nation. Once we sow this act of working together, we will reap a culture of sharing and understanding. If we sow this culture, we will reap a community spirit. If we sow this community spirit, we will indeed reap a nation of doers to guide our youth. It is far better to sow these seeds in our youth now rather than build prison cells when they are grown up men.

IVTB continues to be successful but it should build a network of local supervisors within our communities. It needs to work harder with the business community and find experienced skill-based entrepreneurs like Ton Bouilla to provide practical placements for our youth to learn on the job. Work ethics and quality service provision will not and cannot be provided though lecture-based teaching and training. Students need to learn it by doing and by observing role models like Ton Bouilla.

Carpenters, plumbers, electricians and other skilled technicians are still in short supply in villages and towns. We must do in these sectors what we have achieved in catering. Perhaps it is time to shift our focus and investment from catering to other vocational enterprises like plumbing.

It is critical to remember that institutions like IVTB must have a stronger strategy to work in partnership with parents and businesses. Without such partnership, our youth may have an inadequate vocational education which will lead to poor service provision to the community. Quality service comes through quality vocational education. Thus, the success of our institutions is not how many youngsters have been through a training programme at IVTB but how many of them do actually give high level of satisfaction to customers.

Field Leader, Professional Development

E-mail: [email protected]