The Employability Paradigm
Denis O’Sullivan’s Cultural Politics and Irish Education since the 1950’s (2006) makes the argument that early school leaving has traditionally been understood as a failure of the individual to succeed within mainstream schooling. This essay plans to outline and support O’Sullivan’s argument and also to show how the political and educational system in Ireland has created a criterion for success which guarantees a certain amount of failure.
O’Sullivan’s (2006) argues that the Employability Paradigm which emerged in the 1970’s served to distinguish a group of students who were not achieving the standard needed to guarantee employment. Employability is the assessment of those with the lowest chance of success in an economically motivated nation. It posits that intervention is necessary to prevent those individuals who have failed within the system from being dependent on social welfare and subsequently from being socially excluded (O’Sullivan 2006). In the early 1970’s, Ireland’s entry into the European economy and the changing employment market combined to connect education attainment to employability. As a result, educational credentials became the accepted way of assessing ability and this served to focus attention on those leaving school early with little or no qualifications. O’Sullivan argues that while the policy of the state, on the surface, seemed to support equal opportunity with the provision of free access to secondary education, the reality for most working class students was far from equitable. There were limited interventions available for those who needed help to develop the skills needed to benefit from access to secondary education and these students became disenfranchised. The disc...
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...ing and Youth Labour Markets: A Cross-National Analysis IN: Blanchflower, D. and Freeman, R.Youth Employment and Joblessness in Advanced Countries. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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In February 2002, the House of Commons passed the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA). The Act came into effect in April 2003, replacing the Young Offenders Act (Mapleleaf). The new legislation attempts to balance the legalistic framework of the Young Offenders Act and the social needs approach underlying the Juvenile Delinquents Act. This goal is apparent in the Declaration of Principle stating th...
Not a unified and separate country until 1921, Northern Ireland has had cultural, financial, and economic that makes it stand affront from the rest of the Emerald Isles. With its close proximity to England and the immigration all through the 1600s of English and Scottish, Northern Ireland has become more anglicized th...
The essay will commence by focusing on the1944 Education Act, as it was "the most important piece of educational legislation since 1902" (Gosden, 1983:3). There was a great need for this Act, because the Second World War caused considerable disruption to the educational system. As Dunford and Sharp point out, "evacuation, staff shortages and suspension of building programmes all created their own problems. War also brought important changes in social attitudes, and [...] there was a determination for a better future" (Dunford and Sharp, 1990:17). Therefore there was a need to remodel the current education system "in order to ensure that every child would go to a secondary school" (Gosden, 1983:1). Planning for reconstruction of education culminated in the Education Act of 1944, which is also known as the Butler Act.
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The image of Ireland as a nurturing homeland is contrasted with the repression of religion in another series of epiphany. ...
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During the twentieth century, Ireland was suffering through a time of economic hardship. “Economic growth was stagnant, unemployment was at a historic high and exceeded anywhere in the EU, except possibly Spain, and the state was one of the most indebted in the world” . Irish men and women who had received a formal education had immigrated to other nations due to the unavailability of jobs at home. This left Ireland in a state of further economic downfall, and the lack of skilled workers left Ireland stuck. The 1990’s were a turning point for Ireland. A rise in industry within the nation, as well as an increase in exports, led Ireland to become the “shining nation” in Europe. It became internationally linked with one of the biggest power nations, the United States, and international trade became Ireland’s new source for a booming economy. This brought the rise of what was known as the Celtic Tiger in Ireland.
McCann et al. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1994, 95-109).
Indeed, youth labour market conditions deteriorated significantly at the onset of the Global Financial Crisis in September 2008 and have struggled to recover since. From February 2014 to February 2015, the level of youth employment decreased by 0.9%, while the level of youth unemployment increased by 13.3%. Against this backdrop, the youth unemployment rate has also risen, from 12.4% in February 2014 to 13.9% in February 2015. Youth accounted for 29.8% of the long-term unemployment pool in February 2015, well above the 22.6% recorded in September 2008.