The Northern Ireland Independent Retail Trade Association (NIIRTA) has urged a “redoubling of efforts” to tackle the problem of 9,500 young people in the province who did not achieve five GCSEs (including English & Maths) in today’s exam results.
Glyn Roberts, NIIRTA chief executive said: “We congratulate all the students who achieved some excellent results today and wish them well in their future careers. NIIRTA would very much like to see more young people seeking careers in retail and would urge them to look carefully at their options and of course they should also look at some alternative vocational courses to A-Level, which are offered by many of our excellent FE Colleges.
“While it is important to give credit to those students who achieved 5 or more good GCSES, we must also not forget those who did not.
“More and more of our members are reporting 16 and 17-year-olds applying for jobs who have very poor numeracy and literacy skills and even receiving application forms written in mobile ‘text’ language.
“While it is recognised that the numbers of young people not achieving five good GCSEs have fallen from 12,000 to 9,500, this is still far too high and will limit our economic potential as a region.
“It is our hope that the careers service will be giving extra focus to this 9,500 young people to ensure that they realise their full potential,” he said.
Source: NIIRTA
