Giving young people a second chance or simply playing with statistics?

The Foundation for Educational Services has called on Private Tuition Centres to submit an expression of interest by the end of July 2010 to start providing courses in October 2010 for young people between the age of 16 and 21 who have left secondary school without continuing any further education. These young people are called NEETS – not in education or employment. The courses are to be provided at Level 1 and 2 and they have to be accredited by the Malta Qualification Council.

The idea to provide a second chance in education to those who failed their first chance is a very good idea. But there is a better way of doing things. How is it possible to have private tuition centres design and deliver effective vocational courses and literacy, numeracy and language programmes for these young people in such a short time? Do they have properly trained staff to provide this second chance education to these young people?

A lot of international research (including that conducted locally by Suzanne Gatt for the Employment and Training Corporation ‘Transition School to Work’ 2004 and Dr Charles Mifsud for the European Literacy Researchers in 2008) shows that such educational programmes can succeed only if their content, delivery and learning environment are innovative and imaginative and not associated with the negative experience of these young people in formal schooling. Young people like these tend to prefer practical activities and interactive teaching sessions offering both vocational and basic skills training. The educational and training sessions will have to be offered to very small groups to ensure that these young learners are given individual attention and are treated as adults.

All programmes, including those of literacy, language and numeracy, will be designed to motivate these young people by being relevant, enjoyable, engaging, flexible and practical delivered in an informal and work-based atmosphere through individualised approaches, using ICT and the mobile phone and allowing the young learners to proceed at their own pace through different tracks. The staff running these programmes will be trained appropriately to engage successfully these “hard to reach” young people through being highly committed and patient and dedicated to make it possible for these young people to turn their life around.

Providing second chance education to young people is not like giving them fast food as the Foundation for Educational Services seems to be doing. Is it practically possible to prepare a complete and professional proposal in such a short period for two different levels?

Or is this not about providing second chance education for young people but simply about changing the shameful statistics that show that 40% of our teenagers are leaving compulsory schooling without any basic skills and without continuing in further education and training?

Providing effective second chance education to young people to help them turn their life around is harder that organizing courses for them to be able to report to Brussels that the number of young people continuing in education has climbed closer to the 75% target that the moment is so distant.