Is this site a 'professional site'?
It depends what your view on 'professional' means I guess.
As an employer I do think it is pretty representative of what 'professional' is deemed to be nowadays. i.e. What the colleges say is a "standard" that = "professional/qualified" hence so many young people with pieces of paper but no job/very few clients. I don't think it is they themselves who need to bear the burden of that though - if you are told that you have passed an exam and are "good enough", who are you to argue with the examiner?
The thing is, we all know that the employers and the clients are demanding much higher standards though, and I do feel that some of the education establishments should man up and tell their students that it's not enough to "pass at the lowest standard" and encourage them to reach a little bit higher. We do. For instance, when you do an NVQ Level 3 and you work for us as an apprentice we make you do every single optional unit available as part of your apprenticeship including advanced perming and hair extensions etc. We want our apprentices to be the very best they can be, and if something isn't quite right we refuse to assess it - instead we give the apprentice feedback on where it could be improved and encourage them to try again the following week. We also encourage our apprentices to find out information for themselves through purchasing books, DVDs, training courses and using the internet. They are given homework as research projects rather than being taught by us and then assessed immediately afterwards.
The result? Not one of our apprentices in over 10 years has struggled to find a well paid job as a stylist after finishing their course.
But colleges would find this bizarre - to them, a student who doesn't finish the course = no balloon payment from the SFA so naturally, they are incentivised to qualify everyone - regardless of their ability to do the job in which they are meant to be qualified. The result of this is young people unprepared for the world of work, not skilled enough and with only half a general idea of how to do the work that their certificates say they are qualified in. So when they can't find work...they set up for themselves...hence the basic questions about leases, suppliers or starting up without any money and from then on...how to get clients?
It's really not their fault in my opinion. It is the fault of the current funding system for education and that's what needs to change in order to make the entire industry, not just this site, more professional.
Why fund 92,000 course placements for just 18,000 vacancies? And why make that funding dependant on students (any old students) passing the course and obtaining a piece of paper instead of employment skills?
The apple might be rotten but it's the tree that bears the fruit that needs the harsh treatment in my opinion. Until that happens, nothing can change!
