This event was a good way for us to develop relationships with industry and HEI partners in Egypt, where we could discuss similar challenges being faced and how we can try to solve these more collaboratively.
Discussing employability in Egypt
23 December 2018
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On the 17 December 2018, Pearson hosted an event in Cairo, bringing together professionals from education institutions and the private sector to discuss issues around supporting employability, learning and development in Egypt.
With unemployment rate in Egypt nearing 10% and slowly decreasing, we saw an opportunity in creating a platform to discuss the future of employment and allow sharing experiences and best practices among the attendees.
The focal point of the event was a panel discussion led by Cristina Castro - Global Commercial Product Manager for LCCI at Pearson. Joining Cristina were representatives from the government, education and the private sector, including:
- Dr Mohamed Megahed, the Deputy Minister for Vocational Education
- Mr Ahmed El Saadany Siemens Egypt
- Ms Nahed Maher Cambridge Marketing College
- Dr. Essam El Bookl, Arab Maritime Academy
- Tamir Ismail, The British Council
Dr Mohamed Megahed delivered the opening address where he spoke about the importance of vocational education in Egypt and encouraged the involvement of industry in developing relationships with education providers, in order to develop the future workforce. Dr Megahed also recognised the need to diversify the current career choices in order to meet the future employment needs and industries in Egypt.
Each of the other panellists shared their experiences around the shift from education to the workplace, from either an educator or employer perspective. For example, Mr El-Saadany shared a case study about the challenges Siemens faced regarding the skills shortage, and follow-on impact of training expenses and extended timelines, when building the world’s largest power plant in Egypt.
We also spoke to them about LCCI qualifications, which are designed for those already in employment, or getting ready to enter employment, and wish to gain new skills in a more flexible way. Offering a broad range of subject areas across English language, finance, business and marketing, LCCI qualifications equip learners with work ready skills to prosper in their careers.
The Marketing and Business suites of qualifications have recently been re-developed to address the current industry requirements. You can find out more about our qualifications on the LCCI website or by contacting us.
The feedback from the attendees, which included three major universities in Egypt and over 20 employers, was very positive. We hope to run more of these stakeholder engagement events in the future to support employability, learning and development in other parts of the world.