Hi All,

My son is 17 and has just sat his A/S levels, in an English International school on the Costa del Sol.

The week following the gruelling A/S exams his school sent him on work experience for a week. He is strong a Maths, so they sent him to a firm of accountants in Marbella.

He had to wear a suit and tie, just like all the other accountants. The director of The company in question spent a lot of time with my son, taking him out to show him how to set up a registered company and also explaining to him how all the departments in an accountancy company function.

My son spent 3 days doing actual productive work, like sourcing missing information on invoices from suppliers etc.

At the end of the week they gave him a wonderful letter detailing everything he had leaned.

He now knows exactly what the accountants’ job involves.

Talking with my son he feels that education should involve more real world experience like this.

He also thinks that work experience could start much earlier; say 1-2 days at the age of 13.

I’d like to know what other parents and students think about this subject.
And also I’d like to hear your experiences:-------------

my son did work experience in the UK at 15 so think that Spain is just running a different system, thing is though the experience needs to be a quality one as some of them here seem a bit ropey!!!

My son did his work experience with E-On at a power station and he absolutely loved it. So much so that he wants to make it his career!

The company had a really good training scheme and he had to take a health & safety test before he did anything else. At the end of the 2 weeks he had to give a power point presentation on all that he had learned and he was given a HMV voucher and wonderful references for his effort.

All in all it was invaluable experience for him but I know it's not like that for everyone. I think that the main problem here in the UK is that this work experience is part of the National Curriculum and so there are thousands of kids every year needing a placement.

It stands to reason that not all workplaces/jobs are suitable for untrained 15 year olds so they find themselves just standing and watching.

Work experience is a good idea in principle but it relies heavily on the goodwill of companies and their employees and I also think the kids themselves have to choose their placement carefully if they want to get anything out of it!

Sounds like a positive experience. I also had a good time when I did this, when I was about 16, at a glasgow newspaper. Ok, so I sat around reading newspapers all day, but at least I was having to deal with people of all different ages which was a bit of a surprise after school.

There's often a final year project at university which is a specific work carried out in a company. This is compulsary and I thik a good thing also.

The system in Spain is absolutely abused though. Many companies advertise for Becarios or Practicas for recent graduates, which basically means they get next to no money for doing a job which you'd have to employ someone for in the UK. I've seen adverts where they're looking for work experience people with over two years experience!

I agree 100%. I think our (US) school systems do a piss poor job of preparing kids for the work environment- especially those kids who will not go thru University/secondary education.

I've also thought that while the metal casting industry (sand foundries) has been very good to me...every 14-15 year old kid should have to spend a 100 degree summer shaking out hot iron castings, or grinding them so as to see what usually happens to high school dropouts! It would probably increase the graduation rates by 50% immediately once they see what people have to do to earn $12/hour...