By Ramesh Subbaraman
The Labour Movement is looking for ways to widen its network of educational institutions to reach out to more adult learners.
In the latest initiative, NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability... signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the National University of Singapore's School of Continuing and Lifelong, Education, NUS SCALE when the latter was officially launched in June this year.
NUS SCALE will offer courses in areas of cyber security, supply chain management and civil engineering to enable adult learners to pursue lifelong learning. The school will begin offering the courses in stages from January 2017 to January 2018.
NTUC is already partnering Nanyang Technological University (NTU) to help advance the professional development of Singapore’s workforce for future challenges.
In a follow up to the MOU with NUS SCALE, NTUC Secretary-General (SG) Chan Chun Sing and an e2i team visited the school to better understand the work it is doing.
Urgency to Upskill
Sharing his thoughts during the visit, SG Chan noted that Singapore has done well in the area of compulsory education.
However, due to changes in technology and employment cycles, there is now a need to upskill an entire generation of people very quickly and this is where NUS SCALE has a role to play.
“It is a new set up. We are looking for opportunities to collaborate between NTU and also NUS SCALE to see how we can have modules that are relevant to our adult learners so that in time to come we can use the capabilities of NUS SCALE to help adult learners upskill themselves for future challenges,” said SG Chan.
He added that there is also an opportunity for e2i to partner both in terms of placement, selection and directing the adult learners to the correct place to upskill.
e2i is currently working out the operational details with NUS SCALE to reach out to more adult learners.
Explained e2i CEO Gilbert Tan: “e2i is in the midst of building a network of training providers. Presently, we have partners who do very generic training. There are also those who deliver very specific training. We see NUS SCALE as one of our key partners to reach out to professionals.”
He added that following the visit, e2i will tie up details with NUS SCALE to look at where the jobs are, how to get people suitable for these jobs to take up the training, coach them and finally place them in the job.
Source: NTUC This Week
