New relationships planned between companies and schools

Corporate social responsibility can easily be called corporate conscience or corporate citizenship. A CSR perspective helps corporations increase long term profits and it does not distract from businesses’ economic role. A popular approach to CSR is that of incorporating such a strategy directly into operations.

The Ministry for Education and Employment, together with the social partners, businesses, industry and civil society institutions will jointly engage in a number of activities to empower young people to acquire and develop the necessary attitudes, skills and values for active citizenship and employability.

We aim to build new relationships between companies and schools. We aim to enter into collaborative partnerships to help education, society and the economy understand each other’s needs and goals. We want educational institutions to connect with local businesses, unions and civil society organizations so that we can meet the social and economic needs of our country. We want Malta and Gozo to celebrate the values of inclusion, diversity, social justice and economic prosperity.

This is a challenge that we must face. These activities will address sustainability issues and help us in our quest for a better quality of living, working and learning. We intend cultivating student engagement and motivation, to promote high aspirations in learning and to update existing learning programmes and modes of assessment in both general and vocational and training education.

In line with the Framework for Education Strategy for Malta 2014-2024, these initiatives have a number of targets in order to increase basic skills attainment, reduce the dropout and early school leavers rates and to further participation in adult and lifelong learning. With these programmes and activities, we will support, accredit and certify apprenticeships, traineeships, work-based and work-placed learning programmes as well as community projects.

To be able to meet our targets we must ensure that we enter into collaborative partnerships. These will ensure that education and training are relevant to the required skills for jobs. Our mission is that of connecting companies to share best practices in CSR. We welcome innovative practical action that will shape business contribution for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. We want to change the public perception of entrepreneurs because we must encourage entrepreneurships, through entrepreneurial education and training.

Education plays an important role in the promotion of the core values of democratic citizenship. We must and we will focus on closing the implementation gap and together with participating businesses we will seek a clear definition of democratic citizenship and approach CSR with a defined programme. There is still a clear gap between the rhetoric of policies and the reality of practices. There will always be such a ‘gap’ but the aim should be to make it as small and acceptable, as possible.

Capacity building within and across sectors, is important. This requires the participation of businesses and institutions as well as schools, higher education, non-formal and informal education and society in order to ensure a lifelong learning perspective. To achieve this we also need more comprehensive and systematic training for teachers and educators.

It is our intention that, together with our social partners, we can restructure curriculum development to provide new learning opportunities and skills development. We aim to create a movement around this objective and the links between education, society and the economy will be strengthened to promote the values of human rights, democracy, social inclusion and justice, diversity and at the same time enhance employability skills.