“I think I’m quite updated. I think that my current polytechnic education should be enough for me to have a chance in the working world”
The above quote was from Amber, a first year student from Temasek Polytechnic (TP) in the Business Studies Grouping course, and her perspective on the government’s SkillsFuture initiative.
SkillsFuture is a national initiative by the Singapore government to give Singaporeans who have completed formal education, the opportunity for continuous lifelong learning regardless of age. The objective of SkillsFuture is to drive Singapore to become a more economically advanced and inclusive society.
As part of the initiative, Polytechnics and Institutes of Technical Education (ITE) will be conducting courses for Singaporeans to learn new skills or to advance existing skills in order to remain competitive in the current economy.
January is the usual time when the five polytechnics island wide open their doors to prospective students to get a glimpse of polytechnic education and what it has to offer.
As secondary school students swarmed TP, it seemed that even with the government’s continual push for SkillsFuture, most of these students were uninformed about the initiative. Nevertheless, on learning about SkillsFuture, these students felt that the initiative was an important one.
On SkillsFuture, Phoebe, a 16-year-old secondary four student from Hai Sing Catholic, who attended TP’s open house, had this to say.
“It is an opportunity for people who are working, to improve themselves. Perhaps they want to learn new skills.”
Just like Phoebe, many TP students also felt that the SkillsFuture initiative is a crucial one. One such student is Amanda Leong, a first year student at TP studying Environmental Design.
“The society is ever-changing, so we need to keep up. Sometimes, the more traditional forms of education like secondary school and Junior College (JC), may not be able to keep up in providing people with technical skills. So, (with SkillsFuture) if something changes in the workforce, not only current students, but existing employees can upgrade themselves.”
Amanda, a design student dreaming to become an architect, foresees a day when she would need to take advantage of SkillsFuture.
“Because for now, we are learning architecture, but in the real world, a lot of clients would require us to do interior design, which we don’t learn in my course. So we would need knowledge on interior design.”
However, Amanda was one of the few who held this view on her need for the initiative. Many others felt differently.
“I don’t think I’d need SkillsFuture because I learn a lot of hands-on and relevant skills from polytechnic, so I feel that my time here in poly is enough.” Mentioned Tng Qinqin, a student from TP’s School of Business studying for the diploma for Business.
Just like Amber, although Qinqin did not feel that she personally would not need to utilise SkillsFuture, both of them still recognise the need for the initiative and understand the importance of it.
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