chris horn's blog

There's some considerable debate here in Ireland about the need to "up skill" our economy, in the light of loss of jobs to lower cost economies. I however contend that there is not so much a need to "up skill", but to "core skill" - to get back to fundamentals and thus ensure that we have a solid foundation of lifetime skills.

One of the key attractions which as a nation have used to attract and retain our comparatively high levels of foreign direct investment in Ireland has been the availability of a talented, well educated and technically oriented workforce. If we in Ireland aspire to build a future for our own young people as a leading nation for innovation; with high value services; succeeding as a knowledge-fuelled economy; having good, stable and well paid jobs; and with the ability to afford high quality social support for the weaker members of our society, then education in core intellectual skills are inextricably intertwined with our future.

Our young people should be able to reason, to deduce and derive, to correlate and spot patterns, to explore and to be inquisitive, and to be articulate and confident. In my humble view, these are more life centric skills than learning facts and perspectives by rote: knowing something off by heart, but not understanding why, why not, and so what. Skills taught in schools should be for life. There are many things which can be learnt during adulthood, but some skills which are difficult to learn without a solid foundation during the teens and 20s.

Without these skills, we will have little to offer the 21st century global economy. If our young people are weak in core skills, many of them may not find well paid careers in Ireland nor overseas: these jobs will go to other nationals in other economies.

In my view, and I admit as an elderly grey traditionalist, mathematics is a critical catalyst to careful reasoning and deduction. Mathematics is too vast to be learnt by rote and instead requires insightful thinking and intellectual clarity. Taught well, it enables core intellectual skills for life. It also makes learning easier, not just for mathematics, but many other subjects, since understanding comes from reasoning, rather than learning by rote.

The decline in the Irish attainment of mathematics and core sciences has been gradual. It has perhaps gone unnoticed by many, but major employers across a range of business sectors of strategic importance to Ireland are seriously concerned to see substantial decreases in the number of our students taking technology courses, and in particular the fall off in those taking mathematics. If we all aspire to build a future for our young people as outlined above, then competence in mathematics is a cornerstone. Competence in mathematics underpins not just engineering and the physical sciences, but also sectors such as alternative energy and green systems, financial services, medical research, and cross disciplinary areas such as bio-engineering. For so many areas of our potential national prosperity and quality of society, competence in mathematics is critical.

With further government budget cuts imminent, there is a very serious risk that teaching in mathematics and the core sciences will dramatically suffer further. This is especially so at secondary school (high school, in Ireland) level, since these subjects are perceived as resource intensive and difficult to teach. The Principals of eleven secondary schools of one Irish county have recently jointly written an open letter to all the parents of all their students stating that in view of Government cutbacks, they may no longer be in a position to teach honours mathematics and sciences at all in their schools. There is further anecdotal evidence of schools consciously cutting their teaching programmes in areas which are nevertheless critical to the future of our nation, as their way of meeting newly imposed budgetary constraints.

Incredibly, almost 20% of our schools no longer offer honours mathematics to their students. In 2007, only 14% of Irish university applicants to honours degrees had achieved honours mathematics capability in school.

It is also widely accepted that several factors need to be urgently and collectively addressed to resolve this issue: the professional development and inspiration of mathematics teachers; the teaching and examination methods of honours Mathematics; and other implicit disincentives to students such as points, grading and curriculum factors.

Points, in particular, deserve mention. In Ireland, we have a highly unfortunate and ill-conceived national system of awarding points in our school examinations for grades obtained, regardless of the intellectual difficulty of any particular subject. Earning points by studying honours mathematics is widely projected as overly difficult when equivalent points could be earned for less effort elsewhere. Students are in some cases explicitly advised by some teachers and advisers to take a cluster of subjects which together may overlap in content and collectively make points accumulation easier, regardless of career aspirations. Students who score particularly high totals of points, are under considerable pressure to undertake university degrees which require high numbers of points to apply, regardless of their career aspirations: "don't waste your points". University courses with limited places (due to resource constraints) usually require high levels of points. Courses which offer wonderful career opportunities do not necessarily require extremely high points, and high scoring students usually as a result do not take them.

Examinations are ill constructed. Substantial question choice enables teachers to omit major sections of a course syllabus, thus focussing students on a more limited syllabus which is likely to be sufficient to earn examination points. I'm aware of university professors aghast that some first year university students, ostensibly with high numbers of points, arrive into technology degree courses without any knowledge, for example, of trigonometry: some teachers omit trigonometry from their teaching, correctly believing that high points can still be achieved by filtering out questions during an examination.

In my view, our economy can no longer afford to be impartial in the content of its educational services. Some topics available at our schools can be learnt at any stage in life: others are much more difficult to do so.

Teachers should be encouraged to foster reasoning, deduction, derivation, correlation, exploration and curiosity, intellectual clarity and insight, fluency and confidence. Mathematics and the core sciences are clear catalysts. Teachers who achieve consistent success in their students in these subjects should not only be acclaimed but also receive fiscal reward - if this cannot be done through Government pay, it may be possible to do via industry sponsored competitions. Teachers whose own core skills are weak should be offered re-skilling and professional development. Considerably more use should be made of the web - including podcasts and vidcasts to complement the music on students' personal players - to cultivate dynamic, current, interesting course material: social free educational networking can compensate to some extent weaknesses in any specific teacher in a particular school.

Our country needs to get back to basics: core skills taught well, rather than nebulous "up skills". Mathematics and the core sciences are one critical foundation.

Dell finally announced yesterday that they are winding up their manufacturing operations in Limerick, and instead focussing their European manufacturing investments in Lodz, Poland.

Dell has been a major employer in Ireland, responsible for 5% of GNP according to one estimate. The immediate loss of jobs in the Limerick plant will be 1,900; and with estimates of consequences for a further 1,500 jobs which in firms which directly supply the plant, and a further 7,000 jobs in other industries at risk.

Although the demise of Dell's manufacturing was not a surprise, I was frankly surprised and disappointed by aspects of the way the announcement was made. Dell quite rightly insisted that they would tell their own staff first before anyone else. However I believe it was unprofessional and pusillanimous of Michael Dell, the Dell CEO, not to make the announcement in person himself in Limerick in front of his own staff. He instead sent his VP Operations, EMEA. Michael has been the beneficiary not only of professional work by his own manufacturing staff in Limerick, but also personally of the plaudits by the local community on his several visits to Limerick over the years, not least an honorary degree from the University of Limerick. He was a gentleman enough to receive these accolades, but not man enough to deliver his savage news in person to his own staff.

I was also astonished that the Minister for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE) and co-incidently also the Tanaiste (Vice Prime Minister), Mary Coughlan chose not to appear in person in Limerick. Instead she relied on the local Limerick Minister, the Minister of Defence Willie O'Dea, to be present. In my recollection, previous Ministers of DETE have usually been on hand at the times of major job losses. In fact, as a result of her absence and residence in Dublin Mary Coughlan may have sent the Irish public a not so subtle message: maybe she does not support Willie O'Dea in Limerick and his statements about the future prospects with Dell.

Mary Coughlan is apparently due to travel with the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen to Japan next week to lead a trade delegation from the Irish business community. The timing of this trip could probably not be worse relative to the Dell announcement and the general poor economic condition. One can only hope that Brian Cowen and Mary Coughlan will return to Ireland with very major significant positive news of substantial Japanese investment and business contracts: presumably that is why they are still travelling despite the rapidly deteriorating domestic economic situation and the anxious Irish public.

I said in my opening statement above "finally announced". I think there was a strong fear for some time - maybe even two years or longer - that Dell would stop its Irish manufacturing sooner or later. That being said, I personally do believe the stated Dell corporate position that the decision was only made within the last week, despite some Irish media accusations to the contrary. In a public company, such major announcements are generally material, from the legal perspective, to the public investor community. Public announcement of a major decision thus usually follows immediately after the decision itself: otherwise there is a danger of leaks and the strong possibility of criminal "insider trading". The actual decision was therefore in fact almost certainly only made very recently.

Nevertheless, there was indeed a fear and suspicion for some considerable time that Dell would stop its Irish manufacturing. It is surprising therefore that our Government appears to have poorly handled the announcement. There was plenty of time to prepare a well considered contingency plan, and immediately initiate it. Indeed, I suspect that such a plan was almost certainly prepared by agencies such as the IDA, Forfas and Enterprise Ireland - they are staffed by competent professionals. Perhaps the apparent mismanagement of the consequences of the announcement by the Cabinet and Ministers is symptomatic of a much deeper issue: the Cabinet is overcome by the tsunami of bad economic news, does not know what agencies and advisors to work with or even trust, and is frankly paralysed and frozen in the headlights of the media and of public anxiety.

A senior civil servant today commented to me that it is amazing to consider the turn around in Prime Minister Brown's performance and public perception in the UK. From a period just last July, when he faced a back benchers revolt and the opposition leader David Cameron looked to be the inevitable victor, Brown has executed a stunning turnaround and is now neck and neck with Cameron, if not ahead.

Prime Minister Brown is performing. He is taking visible and urgent actions and steps, and has set out a direction to lead his people...

Looking ahead here in Ireland, it is very clear that we cannot rely on manufacturing activities to sustain our economy. We do have very valuable operations continuing here, not least in IBM, Intel, Apple and HP. The challenge is whether we can nurture our own cohort of Irish companies to leverage such multinationals as a global distribution channel. Are there products and services which we can supply to these companies regardless of where they happen to currently position their own manufacturing operations (hopefully yes in Ireland, but not guaranteed to continue to be so) ? What new products and services can we build, offer, license to them that add value regardless of where they happen to have their operations ?

The answers of course include both new innovations and more efficiently produced current products and services. But amongst the answers is also the strong possibility of building businesses by sublicensing results from the multinationals themselves, with early and nascent markets - I wrote about this in an earlier article.

Our enterprise strategy must evolve - quickly - in Ireland. We need to focus increasingly hard on innovation in Ireland, and building our own companies by exploiting the opportunities which the presence of the multinationals here create.

The doomsday is that Ireland deteriorates to become a domestically traded services economy: services sold within Ireland to support the goods and services we import.

We do not need to "up-skill" so much as "core-skill". "Upskilling" is nice political camouflage, but frankly a shallow aspiration. We instead need to ensure that we have a strong foundation in the core skills - not the "up" skills whatever they are - which are necessary for innovation, insight, and the development of a true indigenous enterprise culture.

I moderate incoming comments onto this blog, to filter out auto-generated spam and adverts etc.

However, a reader yesterday posted me a comment which I have also chosen not to publish in its present form. It criticises a company with which I am not and have not been directly connected, although I do know some of the staff therein. Because the reader has chosen to be anonymous, rather than publicly stating his or her name, I've chosen not to publish the remarks.

I've no way of replying to the reader who sent in this comment, other than by this public blog entry: so, if you do wish to comment on entries in my blog, please do let me publish your name...

A few weeks ago I posted a link to an article which I had written for the Irish Times Innovation monthly magazine.

I'm becoming an occasional columnist for it, and another article appears here in today's edition. The spelling mistake in the title of the online version is their mistake, not mine!

Happy New Year , and thanks for watching my blog..