7,000 ITE students set to benefit from SkillsFuture internships
ITE College Central. TODAY file photo
SINGAPORE – Next year, some 7,000 Institute of Technical Education (ITE) students — spanning a range of courses — will be the first to benefit from the enhanced internship programme offered by the institution with industry partners as part of the SkillsFuture initiative.
These students will be from ITE’s schools of business and services, engineering, info-comm technology, electronics, design and media, hospitality, and applied and health sciences. In all, the programme will be offered in 63 out of the 101 courses on ITE’s books.
Two courses — Nitec in Retail Services and Higher Nitec in Space Design Technology — are currently conducting a pilot run of the programme, where students undergo structured training based on a prescribed list of tasks designed by ITE and the companies, under the guidance of an industry trainer.
By 2020, ITE aims to have all its courses offer the enhanced internships, which run for three to six months.
So far, more than 370 companies, such as Crowne Plaza, OCBC Bank, Certis CISCO Security, Diethelm Keller Aviation and The Soup Spoon, to name a few — have come on board the programme, with 112 companies signing partnership agreements with ITE today (Nov 18) at Crowne Plaza Changi Airport. These agreements clearly define roles and responsibilities of the companies and ITE for the internship. “This ensures that students undergo meaningful work-based learning that allows them to apply what they have learnt in the work place, all while deepening their skills set,” ITE said.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Acting Minister for Education (Higher Education and Skills) Ong Ye Kung reiterated the importance of internships for students to understand and cultivate their passion in a vocation.
“With the enhanced internship programme, it would be even more structured, outcomes will be measured, (and) there’ll be mentors ensured for every student,” he said.
Crowne Plaza Changi Airport, which has hired 40 ITE interns since 2010, currently has a structured internship programme where the students are assigned to buddies in housekeeping, front office, and food and beverage services, for example. Nevertheless, the hotel’s general manager Sunshine Wong noted that its programme could be improved by training interns beyond the basics of the job.
When the hotel starts its enhanced internships next year, Mr Wong said it will explore putting interns in supervisory roles where they can make decisions and even sit in management meetings. “It will help all our interns to know (the) expectations (of the job). And hopefully with that sort of system, it will also give them a bit more confidence (to) feel that this is what they want to do and get them more excited about being in this industry,” he said.
