education and skills report
Minister Simon Harris TD: Education, skills, and lifelong learning Credit: Merrion Street
Education, skills, and lifelong learning are the most robust, transformative and lasting means to future-proof our country’s economic and social wellbeing, writes Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris TD. Our education and skills system needs to be flexible to meet the needs of the learner, of the economy and of society, in order that Ireland can retain its advantage in the global war for talent by retaining and building on its skilled workforce. The education and skills system must encompass everyone and must validate everyone’s path on their skills and career journey. The truth of this is borne out by recent experience. It is fair to say Covid-19 has upended each of our lives in different ways. From an economic and societal point of view, it exposed many divides in our society. One of the most glaring divides was in the area of digital skills. When the world moved online in March 2020, a whole cohort of people were left behind. One-in-six of us struggle with reading and understanding everyday text. One-in-four adults have difficulties using maths in everyday life. Half of us do not have the basic digital skills we need.
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While most of us could work online, do our shopping, our banking online, there was a whole sector of society struggling to get by. Ireland prides itself on being a knowledge-based economy but until we can tackle the digital divide, we risk leaving a whole generation of people locked out of the economy and society. This is why my relatively new department is working to address this challenge. We want to ensure that every single person has the tools to reach their full potential in life. We need to broaden the conversation beyond what people should do in life to what they want to do and how we help them meet those goals. One of the most important initiatives we have launched this year is a new Adult Literacy for Life Strategy. This is one of the most important things we will do. This really important piece of work will see significant investment and resources allocated to ensuring people have the ability to read, to write,
