Category: Commentary
April 15th, 2013 by matthias
The following headline Pressure to win ‘turns children into sports cheats’ reminded me of a blog post I wrote some time ago: Competitive team sports will alienate inactive schoolchildren, report says – it almost did it for me. So, my thoughts on competitiveness are fairly clear (I don’t like it), and learning that pushing for it fosters cheating doesn’t help. Why push for something that doesn’t offer a benefit? This doesn’t fit my definition of a rationally conceived strategy.
Posted in Commentary
April 9th, 2013 by matthias
For the last few years, I’ve been teaching employability and social media skills to groups of Spanish graduates, who are on organised internships to introduce them to the UK workplace – and hopefully find work here. This has been a popular class, and the students are always exemplary in their engagement. It’s clear – they are here to find jobs. I normally happily do my part, give them the information they need, and hopefully instill in them the drive to become noticeable and exceptional candidates. Recently though, something else happened – it got a bit more personal than that. At the end of the class (taking it a whole 30 minutes over the usual 2h in the evening), the questions didn’t end – and it turned into a discussion how they see themselves: as migrants, trying to escape the misery of the Spanish youth unemployment crisis to better shores into another EU country, where conditions are more friendly – and where they will be allowed to contribute. This touched something in me – the gratitude to both the UK (for giving me a home more than 10 years ago), and to the EU which has given me the freedom to move and the right to abode here. As a proud EU citizen (yes, proud), I have done the same journey as they have – just 10 years earlier. As I always say to non-native English speakers seeking advice: “you won’t get your first job for your English, but for the other languages you speak”. For those who are worried about us migrants, taking away ‘British jobs from British people’ (or however the populist narrative goes), I raise that the UK has a recognised skills gap – people who speak foreign languages, and who have had genuine international experience. I see this in daily practice – we don’t take away, we fill a gap to the benefit of the UK economy. Even (or perhaps especially) a UK drifting away from the EU will need to fill this gap – it will probably get worse, seriously impacting the UK’s global competitiveness. UK universities struggle to reach a 20% international study and work engagement rate – while other European nations work on a 50% target. If you look at unemployment – it’s not graduates who struggle most, it’s the medium and lower skilled (which is why I support the CIPD’s Learning to Work policy initiative as an advisor), whose jobs have been restructured away, or casualised beyond affordability (for them). And as long as the UK lives with that skills gap – we will need migrants like my Spanish students – and like me in days of yore – to enrich the UK employment market, to do the jobs that can’t be done ‘in-house’. I work for an organisation that prides itself for its international outlook, for the multilingualism of its students – and rightly so. I admit that in the light of recent debates on the EU, I have been starting to feel slightly unwelcome on occasion – and just writing that I’m a proud EU citizen on a public blog feels weird (as it should go without saying). But I am, and so should my Spanish students be. They bring nothing but the best to this country, offering the flexibility and mobility so regularly bemoaned as lacking by UK employers. They are ultimately not here to take – they are here to give.
Posted in Commentary, Education & Employability
January 23rd, 2013 by matthias
I’ve been in a room in which a government representative told seasoned schools and council careers advisers that they were not skilled enough (‘only’ level 4, not level 6) and therefore failing as a profession. Needless to say there was no money for the allegedly required upskilling. I think she meant to say something different, but that’s how it came out. The reaction was predictable, the chair had to control an majority of the audience of about 60 people, who felt not only threatened of losing their jobs (as they had seen so many colleagues do), and worried about the young people they are responsible for – but also humiliated. The chair, poor soul – oh, that was me – was fortunately on pain medication (for a toothache), so he didn’t join in the rebellious mood, and was relaxed enough to bring order to the room. The main question raised in the ‘reforms’ to careers, advice and guidance in schools and councils has been if face-to-face advice was to be protected. A newly released report by the education select committee shows that it wasn’t Where I work, we pride ourselves for the highly individualised and impartial advice we give – and it is thanks to laudable professional organisations like AGCAS who protect this as a standard; but we’re working in higher education, which has seen its share of questionable ‘reform’ on the professional services side, but not something as damaging as what is happening to careers advice and guidance in schools. What am I learning from this? I think it’s a message of resilience, one about despairing in the face of problematic, badly evidenced decisions by the ‘powers that be’ – but to calmly and rightfully challenge, to get organised in professional associations [declaration of interest, I’m the chair of PlaceNet], and to take part in debate after debate, forum after forum; and to constructively, but persistently, wield the better argument. I’ve long learnt that a) I’m not always right, and b) this makes me the annoying kid in the last row – but that’s probably the best thing I have to contribute. That’s what I’m paid for – professional integrity and impartiality in the interest of our clients and stakeholders. And, dare I say: wider society. We’re not only here as service providers, but as guardians of our respective professions, as careers advisers, registrars, placement officers, and employability professionals. My ultimate lesson for today is not to despair, but pick up the pieces and start again – and to lead by example.
Posted in Commentary, Education & Employability, Talks
October 8th, 2012 by matthias
I’ve been following the debate about competitive school sports for a while, and now have stumbled upon an interesting article on the topic: Competitive team sports will alienate inactive schoolchildren. I’m far from inactive – have never been: starting aged 14, I have never stopped training for longer than a few weeks – following detailed training plans built around martial arts and lifting, with running, cycling and now in middle age, yoga. I train at least 4h a week, with phases of self-organized training camps of up to 10h per week. I’ve worked as a personal fitness trainer spring my studies. Motivation has never been a problem. But vanity aside, there is a point in this – I always engaged with sports, but I have always strongly avoided its competitive angle; to be more exact, if I would have been pushed to compete – as I was when in an athletics team – I would knowingly underperform, or not engage at all. One of the best ways to put me off from something, is to make it a competition – and I don’t think I’m alone. When training clients many years back, I found my best results when helping them tap into their inner urge to live healthier, more enjoyable lives – for themselves. Other benefits, like weight loss, higher productivity, would set in as side effects, not the main purpose. They would stay on the programmes for longer, and I think it was because their motivation came from within. Competition may lead to great short term results, but when it falls away – with people having jobs, families, kids, or injuries – most people disengage. My martial arts school does not do competition – and I train with people who have done the sport for 40 years and more, and I have trained with them for over 25 years. Everyone I know who used to compete has stopped long ago – not only competing, but the sport itself. The aim for physical education should be educate people to take better care of their bodies – over the course of their lives. Pushing them into competitive sports may not only turn them off early on – it almost did that for me – but may also not work towards keeping them active in the long term, which is certainly better for society. To stay true to my blog’s theme – what did I learn? I knew that I am not competitive – but I am starting to think it may actually be counterproductive in many settings.
Posted in Commentary
October 1st, 2012 by matthias
Not a week goes by in which ‘young people’ aren’t blamed for being unwilling to learn, idle, undisciplined or simple ‘lacking the skills’ for employment. They end up in alledgedly shoddy teaching institutions, doing Mickey Mouse degrees, or never engage with the employment market at all. Being part of the CIPD advisory panel for their excellent ‘Learning to Work’ campaign (check my bit.ly bundle on this) has taught me a number of lessons – and that even though I have been sceptical about this youthphobia for a long time. The first one is that none of us is immune to it – it may be a feature of middle age, but even I feel occasionally challenged by the same behaviours I displayed when being out and about under the influence of being 15. It’s all too easy to telling each other stories about teenagers not showing up for time and being glued to their mobile phones – behaviours I’ve seen trained professionals engage in on a regular basis. Yet, having worked on the employability frontline of higher education – arranging placements for London Met students, see common perceptions about institutions and qualifications above – has taught me is that ‘young people’ are a reflection of how ‘we’, the rest of society, treat ‘them’. ‘We’ react well to attempts of hearing us out and giving us the chance to contribute – so do ‘they’. What’s holding young people back are not only the lack of chances available – that’s really not their fault. Whenever the question of role models is being brought up – well, that’s ‘our’ responsibility again – I wonder how we ended up so distrustful of those who will be our workforce. And this is exactly where we should put in the work, offering chances to engage, opportunities to make mistakes, and mentor to succeed. As a recent poll of the 68% of employers who had given a chance to a young person in the last 12 months, conducted by the CIPD found out – 91% liked what they saw. Perhaps it’s our perception that’s not fit for purpose after all, not those who trying to figure out ‘our’ world for the first time.
Posted in Commentary, Education & Employability
April 4th, 2012 by matthias
Disclaimer: this is as always a personal account, and no – I’m not talking against well balanced and well informed careers and study advice; this post is about finding a balance between sufficient and relevant information and following your instinct.
If the Key Information Sets coming in later this year would have been available, my student and professional life would have looked different – most probably worse. I didn’t study at my alma mater, I studied against her. I chose a pretty obscure combination of subjects, and everyone with a proper job (including some of our own professors) told me I therefore would never have a job. Conditions were dire, pedagogy in many instances obscure, resources scarce, and my cohort had an attrition rate of about 90%. Employment rates after 6 months – which were never measured – must have been scary. Careers support was provided for us poor sods who had chosen humanities degrees, because without it, we’d be completely hopeless. There was none for those who were studying the ‘right’ subjects – STEM subjects mostly. At a German state university of 20 years ago we were not clients or customers, we had no concept of consumer type ‘choice’, and we were often treated with contempt. Needless to say – I loved pretty much every minute of it. I did struggle, but I was freed from what I had experienced as a restrictive and conformist school system which was purely about outcomes and performance. See where I’m coming from? Only at university I learnt how to think and reflect – not because it was a learning outcome, but because I had to be able to deal with the demands of our ivory tower style professors whose focus was their research, not their teaching. There were exceptions – especially amongst the PhD pursuing assistants and lecturers – and they really helped me find my way through that jungle. I was awash with information – mostly of the contradicting kind – and I had to learn to interpret it, for which I was given time. What’s that to do with the KIS? Simples – if I had a host of prepackaged data to tell me where my university stood in comparison to others, if I had been subjected to having to interpret the ‘consumer advice label’ on my course while worried uncles and aunts would hover over me, I may have cracked and studied the ‘right’ thing. I don’t envy students who these days have to deal with this flood of tailored information, supposedly helping to make choices as a consumer. As the head of our – excellent – careers service said, it’s best to study something you care about and that will enrich your thinking. Don’t try to anticipate the marketplace years down the line, and then ignore the flood of well meaning advice based on pointless statistics.
Posted in Commentary, Education & Employability