In the next century, we are told, people in our workforce will need to be flexible team players, self-assured and capable of changing career two or three times in their lifetime. The values of the marketplace will put much more emphasis on collaboration and people will be valued for their personal growth and development just as much as their qualifications and skills.

If this is to be the story, where does our school system fit into this grand scheme of things, particularly our post-primary system?

Does it measure up, and will it be able to deliver the qualities as well as the qualifications?

When we look to the future and consider the self-assured, flexible team players that will be required, then we can only imagine the type of schools they will come from.

The school will be pupil-centred; the emphasis will be on building confidence - and teachers, management and the Department of Education and Science will all model teamwork.

The management of schools will paint the vision that is required to keep their staff motivated and will take responsibility for affirming their staff. Planning time will be built into the school day and will be a professional requirement.

The schoolrooms will show plenty of evidence of being learning environments instead of cramming schools; there will be an emphasis on pupils taking responsibility for their own learning, with libraries and good computer facilities for access to information. Pupils will work on projects and in teams and the teacher will mostly act as the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage.

DO WE MEASURE UP now to this type of schooling? The answer is a definite no - and yet the solution to the problem lies in all our hands.

The typical defence mechanism of projection of blame, where some of the partners play helpless victims and the others duck for cover, will never bring about the change that is needed. Is a change of attitude needed by all, so that we can debate the possible ways forward as mature adults?

Do we need to arrive at a collective plan that gives us a framework to build a modern education system that will be in keeping with the times and will keep the very best of what we have now and build on it?

Geraldine Simmie member of the Transition Year Curriculum Support Service in the mid-west, on secondment from the Jesuit secondary school in Galway, Colaiste Iognaid