Year Up: The ABCs of Bridging the Opportunity Divide

The other ABCs: a lightbulb moment

Went running Sunday morning listening to BBC's World Business Report podcast and heard about how American non-profit Year Up helps young school leavers skill up to get jobs. BBC World Business Report Podcast. (Oct 5, 5 minute mark)

Their pitch: over the next 10 years, American companies will face a shortage of 14 million qualitied workers. Yet, there is a slew of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds for whom the US education system hasn't adequately served. The result: they're unable to take up these jobs.. Link to Year Up's site

Year Up's mission? Skill up 5 million bright young adults from economically disvantaged backgrounds to gear them up to meet the demands of the working world. The student BBC interviewed talked about learning Outlook, Word and Excel - things you and I take for granted. She also learned technical IT skills - adding that being able to take apart a computer and put it back together again helped her gain confidence. She's now one of the 84% of Year Up's graduates who are employed or attending university full-time within four months of completing the program.

The program's website lists four pillars of focus: Support, College Credits, Job Skills and Internships.

But what really struck me was how the Year Up's spokesperson distilled the program to three key elements. He called them ABCs:

• Attitude
• Behaviour
• Collaboration

Skills are key, of course. Even in Singapore, we've got tons of kids with skills. 

What's not so easy to get across is the importance of Attitude, Behaviour and Collaboration - crucial in the workplace but invisible on a report card. You can't really test for these ABCs and I haven't certainly seen these qualities discussed or emphasised in the current debate on our education system and standardised testing. 

Maybe we've forgotten these ABCs in our rank-based, race-to-the-top, report-card based Type A school system. Maybe we owe it to our kids to help them, and ourselves, remember that these qualities are the fundamentals of a knowledge-based society - or any society for that matter. 

I have to say I'm as guilty as anyone. As a volunteer at the Beyond Social Services @ Whampoa, I keep asking about measureable KPIs in the kids' reading program we're working on. The Year Up interview has made me change my mind somewhat. Don't get me wrong, visible progress is still important to me. I feel strongly that without good English fundamentals, these kids are disadvantged in a way that middle class kids from English-speaking homes aren't.

But I'll need to keep reminding myself that the goal of spending time with the 6 to 12 year olds isn't just about helping them put together vowels and consonants. It's also to show, by example, the importance of the other ABCs.