JEDDAH, 12 June 2007 — The Second Symposium on Technical Training and Education in Jeddah yesterday aimed at establishing positive feedback between local employers and promote and discuss work-based training.

Under the banner “Training in the Workplace,” academics and educationalists highlighted the need to match the real needs of the marketplace with the output of technical colleges and vocational training institutes in the Kingdom.

Dr. Mansour Al-Mimani, Dean of Jeddah College of Technology — which sent nine students and three staff members to Brighton and Hove City College in March — said that the recent pilot project that sent students to train in the UK workplace in March had been very successful.

“Our aims are to twin the colleges, to establish their links firmly, to develop exchange programs and exchange experiences,” he said. “On Tuesday we sign an agreement between us and the Brighton City College to formalize the relationship between us in a twinning program.”

He said that the main focus of a vocational program was to provide a mechanical and technical training to meet the shortage of labor skills in the Saudi market. As part of the exchange program, British students from the Brighton college will visit Jeddah later in the year.

Jim Scarth, director of the British Council in Saudi Arabia said, “It is all geared to increasing youth employment. The outcome is that the project places trainees in workplace environments where they can apply learned skills. It also develops a link between the colleges involved in training and the employers who will eventually hire the trainees.”

Ann Smith, principal and CEO of the Brighton City College, said in her presentation to the conference that the college had moved away from presenting a menu of courses to employers and changed their ethos to soliciting the employers’ needs and tailoring courses to meet them.

She thought this was a radical shift that had led to a much better matching of demand and supply in the skills market. “We had to listen to what employers wanted, what was good for them and the country,” she said.

Smith and Bob Tipping, director of international services at the Brighton City College, have visited several colleges and training institutions during their current visit to the Kingdom with a view to establishing more links between Saudi and UK colleges.

“Colleges work together at many levels, but we wanted to make the relationship tighter and involve students face to face and working together on common projects,” noted Tony Calderbank, regional vocational training director for the British Council, a co-sponsor of the conference.

He said that Jeddah/Brighton was the first twinning relationship to be established. In March nine students of automotive engineering with two members of staff visited Brighton for a week where they worked in the Brighton Automotive Engineering department with British students to pilot the scheme.

Calderbank added that they had tried to make the program as un-commercial as possible. “We don’t want people to get involved in it for commercial reasons, but for the international experience, exposure to new skills and cultural exchange for learners, teachers and staff.”

In his view the face-to-face student exchange was an application of intercultural dialogue in very practical circumstances. “When you have a group of young men all working on a car engine together, there is communication — even with the language barrier — that takes place without words. It establishes the idea that, as a bottom line, that people have a lot in common.”

The success of this pilot has encouraged the British Council to facilitate linkage of the Riyadh College of Telecommunication with a — yet to be decided — UK college.