Debated in Parliament on 4 Nov 2014.
Mr Ang Wei Neng asked the Minister for Education what is the progress on creating more apprenticeship opportunities for ITE students to work in small and medium enterprises.
Mdm Speaker, ITE has strong links with industry players, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs). These partnerships have helped ensure that course curricula stay relevant and students have access to good opportunities for industry attachments and exposure.
Currently, SMEs make up more than 60% of ITE's host companies for internships and traineeships and host almost 40% of ITE students for their industrial attachments.
Following the Government's acceptance of the Applied Study in Polytechnics and ITE Review (ASPIRE) recommendations, MOE and WDA have been working together on new place-and-train programmes for our Polytechnic and ITE graduates that integrate study and work, to be launched by 2016 as earlier announced. This is being done in partnership with many economic and regulatory agencies, including SPRING Singapore.
Where feasible, we will leverage on existing schemes and funding support for employers to implement these place-and-train programmes, including SPRING Singapore's SME Talent Programme.
Thank you, Minister, for the comprehensive reply. Many Singaporeans are very proud of the various ITE where campuses are with air-conditioning. The reality is that some SME jobs do not provide an air-conditioned environment, including those in the oil and gas industry, construction industry and even repair and maintenance of MRT trains and tracks. So, ITE graduates working in the oil and gas industry also need to get used to the smell of the gasoline.
As a result, quite a number of ITE graduates in the technical field refuse to work in a non-air-conditioned environment and they choose to work in the IR, for example. I have these supplementary questions. How could MOE provide a realistic environment in the beautiful ITE campuses so that the graduates would not react in shock when they attend a workplace which is non-air-conditioned? And does MOE track the number of ITE graduates in the technical field who do not remain in this field?
I thank Mr Ang for his questions. First, on whether every part of ITE is air-conditioned, in fact, Senior Minister of State Indranee and I on our recent visit to ITE Central tried our hands in being aircraft technicians. We were in full suits; we were doing
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the work. I assure you that that was not in an air-conditioned environment.
But I think the more important question is, what would encourage our students to continue to go into an area which they have been trained for? And this is exactly what the ASPIRE Committee sought to do. The recommendations of the ASPIRE Committee are wide-ranging, building structured internship, better educational and career guidance and working with companies to ensure that the jobs have the significant skills ladder and career ladder, that will encourage our students to invest their time and energy to enter those jobs and build skills. I think those are the issues that we need to tackle, not whether it is air-conditioned or non-air-conditioned.
PAPERCUTS