Rosie Niven

If you ring a call centre these days, you are just as likely to get an Indian accent as a Cardiff or Glasgow one. In the face of international competition, employing people in UK call centres can be an expensive business for companies. You can see their thinking: why employ a surly British school leaver when for the same wage you can employ an Indian graduate with better communication skills?
The government, regional development agencies and the CBI regularly bang on about making sure young people leave schools with the skills that local employers want. But when one Sunderland school tried to do exactly that, it faced a backlash.
Sunderland has traditionally been an area of high unemployment and it still has higher than average unemployment rates compared with the rest of northeast England. But the city is also one of the fastest growing call centre locations in the country. Companies like Barclays and insurance company More Than have call centres in the area.
The growing demand for call centre staff prompted local employer EDF Energy to set up a mock call centre at Hylton Red House. On a course, worth half a GCSE, pupils deal with complaints from computer generated customers. The idea is that pupils who take the course will be more prepared for the world of work.
But the local National Union of Teachers branch has criticised the course for narrowing pupil’s aspriations. It argues pupils will start seeing working in call centres as an easy option when such jobs could just dry up, like mining jobs before them.
I see where the union is coming from, but I find its view a little insulting to the pupils and also teachers at Hylton Red House. Surely a few hours a week preparing for the world of work, in addition to the other requirements of the curriculum, is a good thing? Especially, in an area where many young people opt out of the labour market altogether.
Perhaps getting to grips with more practical skills may boost some underachieving pupils’ confidence and may even encourage them to aim higher academically.