A class of a different kind was awarded certificates of completion today at Thompson Rivers University, Williams Lake.
TRU in conjunction with School District 27 and the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training had offered the first ever school bus driver training over the last 10 weeks and today, 10 newly minted drivers received their certificates.
The 10 week program was funded by the Ministry to the tune of 112-thousand dollars and the primary instructor, Robert Goss, is hopeful the program will run again…Well, no, we’re hoping the course will run again because , we’re looking at other options potentially to to be able to do some of the student management because that was a large part of it, but we are hoping to run it again but of course that’s funding and so on but oh ya know it would be great to run it again because you can never train a bus driver too much”
Cariboo-Chilcotin MLA and Minister of State for Rural Economic Development, Donna Barnett handed out the certificates on behalf of her cabinet team mate Shirley Bond.
Barnett says government is starting to get it right by asking what a community needs in the way of training programs and then working to fill those needs, rather than like in the past, telling a community or school these are the programs we will fund and then having students who graduate, but their new skills aren’t what the work force needs.