South Carolina’s technical education options, long a model for the country, expanded last week with the introduction of the state’s first high school curriculum, designed to prepare students for internships or other job opportunities. It is another important milestone in the state’s efforts to integrate the job skills sought by SC employers into high school curricula.
The pre-learning program is a collaboration between the Richland School District 1 and Carolina Apprentice, a subsidiary of the SC Technical College System. It is designed to prepare students to enter and succeed in a registered learning program. These programs meet the high standards set by the US Department of Labor and are eligible for federal grants.
The Carolina Learning Program, created in 2007, has been recognized by the United States Department of Labor as a national model for expanding learning.
As offered by Richland 1 and Apprenticeship Carolina, pre-learning opportunities are open to students in transportation, distribution and logistics; Health Science; automotive technology, diesel mechanics and commercial management; business, finance and marketing; hospitality and cuisine; agriculture and natural resources; Engineering; media technology; information Technology; and construction and manufacturing.
Craig Witherspoon, Superintendent of Richland 1, was proud of his district’s efforts to provide students with such valuable training in the real world. “This forward thinking approach to skill development will provide unprecedented opportunities for our students,” he said in a press release. “They will learn skills on demand and will be given a clear path to meet their educational and career goals.”
The pre-learning program offers students the flexibility to prepare for more than one internship. It differs from the more practical training provided by youth internships offered at Charleston, Dorchester and Berkeley County high schools by Trident Technical College through the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship program, which has been in operation since 2014.
The new program in Columbia is another advance of the state’s Technical College System, established in the 1960s at the initiative of then Gov. Fritz Hollings. The system has been a national leader since its founding, with a long list of successes over the past six decades, including training 5,000 workers for Boeing’s operation in North Charleston. The Technical College System helped South Carolina to become one of the fastest growing manufacturing states in the country. South Carolina was one of five states to obtain an A rating in a 2019 Ball State University study on the health of manufacturing.
The Richland 1 program is another achievement in this effort that is worth celebrating.