When it began in New Zealand in 1992, the Aotearoa Mature Employment Service Trust (AMES) had a relatively simple goal: to help a handful of senior executives who were made redundant find new jobs. Since then, AMES—now known as AMES Training and Resource Centre—has dramatically evolved along with New Zealand’s job market. AMES now trains about 500 students annually—from ages 16 to 65—to meet the needs of the modern workplace, using its unique certification curriculum built around teaching tools and certification programs offered through the Microsoft® IT Academy program.
Education Needs
For a small, agriculture-based country like New Zealand, the emergence of Asian neighbors China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan as powerhouses in the global information and communications technology (ICT) sector created both an opportunity and a challenge. According to a 2003 report by a government-sponsored task force on the future of New Zealand’s ICT industry, the island nation already had some niche successes in the technology arena—“small by global standards but significant by ours.” But breaking out as a full player in the global ICT market, the task force said, would require renewed national focus and effort.
“It is about getting in front and staying there,” the task force declared.
One imperative was to expand New Zealand’s pool of ICT-trained workers. To meet the goal of doubling its ICT industry’s contribution to the country’s gross domestic product by 2012, New Zealand would need to triple the number of people in the workforce trained in ICT skills, the report said.
A key barrier to attaining that goal was the limited number of training programs teaching the advanced technology skills needed by employers. In the dynamic ICT field, New Zealand companies seeking to make the transition from local entrepreneur to global supplier needed workers with technology training beyond that required by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA), which sets the country’s ICT training syllabus.
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We wrote our curriculum using Microsoft certification standards to match what our students need to learn in today’s global ICT sector. We tell them when they graduate, ‘What makes you different from others with a diploma is that certification.’ |
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Keith Heathcote
Academic Manager, AMES Training and Resource Centre |
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“What we found,” says Keith Heathcote, Academic Manager for AMES, “was the available government syllabus was enough to get students a job. But they couldn’t get certified as a Microsoft® Certified Systems Administrator, and that is what the companies wanted.”
Despite the pressing need for ICT-trained graduates, the NZQA had not updated its technology curriculum in years. In 2003, says Heathcote, “We went to the government bodies that do the approvals and we said, ‘We’ll write our own curriculum to match what students need to learn today.’”
Solution
To shape its ICT curriculum—the first time a New Zealand technical school had undertaken such a task on its own—AMES turned to the Microsoft IT Academy program, and in particular the wide range of Microsoft certifications. Microsoft certifications are among the most demanding and respected credentials in the industry, stressing both technical knowledge and real-world experience.
For the core of its program, AMES adopted the Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC), which teaches IT professionals and developers to build, support, and implement solutions using Microsoft technologies. Available to Microsoft IT Academy members at a discounted price, MOC is designed to cover topics that employers consider to be mission-critical.
AMES divided its ICT curriculum into three components: a module offering basic IT instruction to beginners, another covering how networks operate, and a third on how networks communicate. The Microsoft IT Academy program also provides membership in the Microsoft MSDN® Academic Alliance Program, which gives AMES faculty and students access to the latest software. Students can download the software for study and practice outside the classroom.
Another benefit of Microsoft IT Academy membership is online access to books published by Microsoft Press®. “The ability to access all the Microsoft Press books online through the E-Reference Library saves us the considerable expense of buying books,” says Heathcote.
By developing its curriculum around Microsoft IT Academy offerings, AMES has begun attracting younger students to the ICT field. Last year, the school began using television advertising to recruit what Heathcote calls the “Thumb Generation”—younger students accustomed to texting and using the Internet. It has also mounted an extensive liaison program with Auckland’s public and private secondary schools, advancing the message that an AMES degree with one or more Microsoft certifications promises substantial hiring and salary advantages when students join the workforce. Today, nearly half of the school’s students are under the age of 25.
Benefits
AMES’s participation in the Microsoft IT Academy program is helping New Zealand advance toward its ICT goals. AMES is currently building its third campus in the Auckland area and graduates about 500 students annually, ranging in age from 16 to 65.
“A large number of our students have come back to us to validate skills they already possess,” says Heathcote. About 20 percent of the school’s students already have a university degree. Some, including nurses and teachers and long-term unemployed workers, are seeking a new career in IT. “They can complete a one-year program that incorporates the Microsoft certifications,” he says, “then proceed to a new job in a new industry.”
To date, AMES has graduated more than 4,000 students from its three-year, one-year, and certification programs. About 60 percent of the graduates have at least one Microsoft certification, says Heathcote, making AMES one of New Zealand’s largest ICT training schools. About 70 percent of AMES graduates with Microsoft certifications find jobs within six months.
“We wrote our curriculum using Microsoft certification standards to match what our students need to learn in today’s global ICT sector,” says Heathcote. “We tell them when they graduate, ‘What makes you different from others with a diploma is that certification.’”
In addition to offering Microsoft certifications, AMES is also a Prometric testing centre. This means it has secure facilities for onsite certification testing, which is convenient for students and supports AMES’s overall mission of enabling students with twenty-first century skills for employability.
