IT EXPERTS are one of the few professions still in high demand in today’s labour market, in spite of the current global economic downturn.
To help create IT experts at secondary schools, the civic association IT School, in cooperation with the Education Ministry, the State Institute of Expert Education and companies operating in the IT sphere, has created a project which links the private sector with schools and educational institutions.
Slavomír Terezka, the head of IT School, said: “Our goal is to create in Slovakia via the IT School project an adequately educated labour force for investors and leaders from the IT sector.”
According to Terezka, on the basis of cooperation between schools and well-known companies from the IT sector they want to incorporate into schools’ curricula and practical work those requirements which the current market places on graduates. They thereby hope to support a rise in employment based on a qualified and flexible labour force.
One of the companies which will participate in the project, IBM, has joined it as a technological partner. It will equip selected schools across Slovakia with a central computing and education system.
Through this project IBM wants to contribute to the development of knowledge and create specialists able to work in IT companies, as well as the production sector, the state administration or other sectors in which information technologies are used. The project will focus on people in the education process – in particular secondary school students and their teachers. The aim of the project is, in cooperation with producers, service centres and IT companies, to prepare future experts in the IT segment with a focus on hardware, software, networks, and diagnostics of computers - and also to unite the education and IT sectors.
“We regard the IT School project as an excellent opportunity to prepare young people already at secondary schools as future IT specialists,” said Roman Brestovanský, director general of IBM Slovensko.
The project will be incorporated into the educational process after the study programme is approved for the next academic year. The list of schools taking part in the project includes schools in Humenné, Stará Turá, Kysucké Nové Mesto, Prešov, Banská Bystrica and Nové Zámky.
