Northern Ireland stands at a crossroads, a famous comment, often overplayed, overused and overemphasised. Having flagged the extent of not building policy that can have positive impact, education loomed large into view. The second largest budget, after Health, neither can be said to be delivering the outcomes we need.
 
With economic inactivity costing the economy up to £9 billion per year, we must ask difficult but necessary questions about our education system. Are we preparing our young people not just to pass exams, but to engage meaningfully with the world of work, training, and enterprise? Or are we inadvertently contributing to the very problem we seek to solve?
 
The answer may lie somewhere in between. But one thing is certain: the current trajectory of secondary education is not aligned with the economic needs of Northern Ireland or the potential of our young people. The default to reforming multiple sectors is not going to change the outcome, playing academic verses technical and vocational is not the answer, it is about rebuilding a sector around the learners needs.
 
The Disconnect: Curriculum vs Capability
For too long, the structure of secondary education has prioritised academic pathways, often at the expense of practical skills, vocational insight, and real-world readiness. This system suits some, but fails many, particularly those from lower-income backgrounds or with different learning styles. It's no coincidence that NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) rates remain stubbornly high among 16–24-year-olds.
 
Students disengage because what they learn feels irrelevant. They don’t see the connection between their maths lesson and a future in software engineering, or between their science class and a role in advanced manufacturing. And when they leave school, often without clear direction, they risk becoming part of the economic inactivity statistics we must do more to reduce.
 
Is Current Policy Helping?
The Department for Education has made strides, with programmes like Engage, Restart, and enhanced careers guidance. But these interventions often come too late, tacked on at Key Stage 4, when disengagement has already taken root. A sharper focus is needed at Key Stage 3 and transition years (14–16), when young people begin to shape their identity and ambition.
 
And while curriculum review and mental health support are welcome, the real test is whether these policies build bridges to the world beyond school gates.
 
A Better Path: Collaboration Is the Catalyst
The good news? The answers are already within reach—and Further Education (FE) colleges are key to unlocking them.
Imagine a system where 14-year-olds can sample real industries, where project-based learning is co-delivered with local employers, and where teachers partner with FE tutors to blend academic and vocational routes without stigma.
 
FE colleges have proven expertise in helping people transition into work. From digital apprenticeships to green skills bootcamps, they are agile, industry-facing and rooted in community need. But too often, they are an afterthought in policy design, when they should be front and centre.
 
What Could It Look Like?

• Early vocational taster programmes delivered jointly between schools and colleges
• Employer-led challenge weeks in curriculum time
• Flexible 14–19 pathways that allow for mixing GCSEs with BTECs, micro credentials, and work experience
• Incentives for schools to partner with FE providers, not compete with them

 
The Prize: Purpose, Progress, Productivity
A young person who understands their value and sees a future for themselves is less likely to become economically inactive. By realigning the education system to meet both learner potential and labour market need, we give young people the chance to thrive and Northern Ireland the workforce it needs to grow.
 
Let’s not wait for another generation to slip through the cracks. Let’s build a system where education ignites opportunity, not exclusion. It’s time the NI Executive, Education and Economy departments broke out of self-interest and protectionism to support schools, FE colleges, and employers to work in synergy for the future of our young people, and the prosperity of our economy. Pockets of this type of activity, working outside of the system are delivering, it now should be completely mainstream, ending the exam factory system of today.
 

In a society where nearly one in four working-age adults is economically inactive, the question is no longer whether we need change, but whether we are structurally capable of delivering it.

Northern Ireland’s economic inactivity rate remains the highest in the UK. Despite decades of policy attention, the underlying causes are well documented: long-term sickness, caring responsibilities, early retirement, and low engagement in adult learning persist. The challenge is not a lack of data or diagnosis. It is a question of political will, institutional agility, and cultural readiness to act.

A System Designed to Sustain the Status Quo?
Northern Ireland’s public sector is large by any comparative measure. The Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) employs over 23,000 people, and public sector employment accounts for more than a quarter of the workforce, far higher than in England or the Republic of Ireland. This scale brings stability, but it also brings inertia.

The NICS is predominantly middle-class, degree-educated, and urban-based. It is a system that, by design or default, reflects the values and priorities of those who work within it. This is not a critique of individuals, but of a culture that prizes process over outcomes, and continuity over disruption.

Too often, policy is shaped by what is administratively convenient rather than what is socially transformative. Investment flows to institutions that already exist, rather than to the communities that need them most. The result is a system that manages disadvantage rather than resolving it.

The Cost of Comfort
This middle-class policy bias manifests in subtle but powerful ways. Funding for Further Education (FE) colleges—those most likely to serve economically inactive adults—is consistently lower than for universities. Health spending prioritises acute care over prevention. Employment programmes focus on those closest to the labour market, not those furthest from it.

The cost of this comfort is hard to properly estimate, if it is extrapolated from wider UK data the cost of economic inactivity to Northern Ireland is between £6.7 and £9.2billion! This is a combination of lost economic output, public spending on welfare and health interventions, foregone tax revenues and the social costs of higher crime rates (sustained by the scourge of so-called paramilitarism) mental health impacts and the burden of caregiving, which impacts women disproportionality. 

Meanwhile, the people most affected by economic inactivity, older workers with health conditions, women with caring responsibilities, young people without qualifications remain on the margins of policy design. Their voices are rarely heard in the rooms where decisions are made. 

Learning from Elsewhere
Contrast this with the Basque Country in Spain. There, economic inactivity among working-age adults is around 15%, almost half the rate in Northern Ireland. The difference is not demographic; it is strategic.

The Basque model integrates vocational education, employment services, and social care. FE colleges are empowered to co-design curricula with employers. Modular, flexible learning is the norm. Occupational health is embedded in job centres. And most importantly, the system is designed around the needs of people, not the convenience of institutions.

A Call to Leadership
Northern Ireland does not lack talent, compassion, or creativity. What it lacks is a system that rewards boldness and centres lived experience. We need a civil service that reflects the diversity of the society it serves. We need policymaking that is co-designed with communities, not just consulted after the fact. And we need investment that is judged by its impact, not its alignment with existing structures.

This is not a call for revolution, but for rebalancing. For shifting the gravitational pull of the system away from the centre and toward the edges. For recognising that the status quo is not neutral, it is a choice. And it is a choice we can no longer afford to make.

The Conversation Starts Here
This note and thoughts contained is not a conclusion. It is an invitation, an invitation to everyone in Northern Ireland,  politicians, civil servants, educators, and citizens. An invitation to ask harder questions and imagine better answers. What would it take to build a system that truly works for everyone? And what are we prepared to change to get there? 

The measure of who we are, is what we do, with what we have – Vince Lombardi

Our “true north” is said to be the internal compass that acts as a guide towards success and achievement. It is your orienting point – your fixed point in a spinning world, that helps you stay on track as a leader. As we face uncertainty and paradigm shifts never experience or faced before personally or in business. In these stressful, surreal times, it is understandable for directors to fixate on the urgent business priorities at the expense of the more intangible or personal considerations. How important is it to ensure we and those in our organisations think about purpose?
 
The Rush Memory & Aging project, which began in 1997, finds that when comparing patients who say they have a personal sense of purpose with those who say they don’t, the former are:

• 2.5 times more likely to be dementia free
• 22percent less likely to exhibit factors for stroke
• 52percent less like to have experienced a stroke

 
What is seen in personal experience of purpose can also be said of purpose in a business setting. Purpose can be an important contributor to employee experience, which in turn is linked to higher levels of employee engagement, stronger organisational commitment, and increased feelings of well-being. People who find their individual purpose congruent with their jobs tend to get more meaning from their roles, making them more productive and more likely to outperform their peers. McKinsey research finds a positive correlation between the purposefulness of employees and their company’s EBITDA margin.
 
In boardrooms real and virtual, frantic questions have the floor. How long will this last? How will we pay furloughed workers? What are our peers doing? What should we do first? In moments of crisis, the default expectation is that businesses will hunker down and focus on bottom-line fundamentals. But in this crisis, stakeholder needs are already so acute that the opportunity for businesses to make an indelible mark with human support, empathy, and purpose is greater than it has ever been.

• Understand Stakeholder Needs – Examine exactly what is at stake for your employees, communities, customers, partners, and owners. All will have urgent, rapidly evolving needs that you should fully understand and prioritize. Some of these needs will be new and require creative thinking. Listen carefully to stakeholders that are well placed to inform you.

 

• Utilise Your Greatest Strengths – What strengths does our businesses possess that you can apply to make the biggest difference for your stakeholders? Strong balance sheets have been used to sustain workers through the crisis. Unique logistics networks have been used to bring aid to people in need. Many manufacturing facilities have shifted production to creating urgently needed medical supplies or PPE. Resist going it alone. Collaborate closely with your ecosystem of suppliers and customers—they might identify strengths you didn’t even know you had.

 

• Involve Your Team – Many employees and their families are suffering from isolation and loss of income, leaving them thinking about what is truly important. Crisis leaders’ actions now can foster collective unity and a sense of belonging. When those decisions derive from the principles and purpose that a business stands for it will make it easier to convey confidence in positive outcomes, even when decisions are painful ones.

 

• Lead from the Front – communicate early and frequently, even with incomplete information. Remember that, right now, suffering stakeholders seek empathy but are also looking to leaders to face facts bluntly, without sugar-coating them. Stay nimble as situations change, which they certainly will. Adapt to changing conditions and new information rather than returning to a static playbook

 
Finally, decisions about purpose may be some of the more difficult decisions of your career. There will be a cacophony of opinions; adjudicating them will take discipline and conviction. There may be thinner evidence to guide your actions than you would like. Don’t let yourself be rushed. Establish a fact base to help you weigh trade-offs and mitigate risks. 
 
Above all, don’t settle for “generic” on purpose. You do have a “true north” to discover, and unique impact to deliver. Each company’s role stretches far beyond the confines of your employees and customers. Our suppliers will look for guidance, peers will look for inspiration. And society will hold us as directors accountable for leaving the world a better place than it was when we started.

Northern Ireland’s critical SME and family business base play a role in our economic activity like no other part of the wider economy in Great Britain or Ireland. This foundation of the private sector is easily forgotten and often the innovation, effort and enterprise of these organisations goes unnoticed. Many of these businesses also have the capacity to deliver even more but can be reticent to open themselves to external support. This is understandable and, in many ways, a cultural issue, it is however a key driver to taking many businesses to the next level. 

A non-executive director is still seen as a luxury, others have this title but are nothing more than a form of consultant. However, a business embracing a chair or board member who is independent of the ownership or family can change the dynamic and trajectory in a way previously unimaginable. 

Trying to bring this all together, taking the next step is a bit like what Franklin D Roosevelt said, “I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.”

Know the company’s vision. Where do you want the company to go? Define what you need the board to do to achieve those goals. Keep that in mind as you consider and define the attributes, skills, and experiences that you need of your board members.

Seek the right skills. Create a simple grid combining attributes that actually exist in the market. Draft a table with all the desired aspects of a “final” board. Fill in the table with prospective ideas for each director, ranking each in terms of depth or fit and whether that person can be recruited. Keep this list current, fresh, and ongoing, and make it an active item of discussion at board meetings.

Develop role and responsibilities for members. As Jim Collins says, “Do you have the right people in the right seats on the bus?” It’s never too early to have committees or key areas of responsibility. Do you have the best head of audit, compensation etc.? Who are the lead directors that you as CEO / MD can rely on in each critical area?

Build a culture and invite debate. Foster a culture of open feedback and independence. You want different opinions and perspectives to help you consider alternatives. Consider the culture and interaction you want from your board: passionate and intense debate, or cerebral and deliberative? You want to recruit a board that pushes you, makes you uncomfortable and challenges conventional wisdom. At the same time, you want a board and not an operating committee – so setting boundaries is important.

Break through your comfort zone. Boards tend to reach for what’s familiar and comfortable, which results in homogeneity. Knowing that, you should strive for diversity of opinion and not be afraid to go against the grain. Keeping that top of mind will help you be open-minded to alternatives you would not have considered in the first place.
Having an independent chair on the board or a non-executive director is not a silver bullet for success. Finding the right fit for the business is not easy either, when you find that person, it is not about 6 months only, it needs to be for a few years, regularly reviewing their role with them and knowing the right time to bring a new face to the table. 
 
Good governance and a strong board room can change the business dynamic, shape the future, develop the risk appetite and help see the bigger picture. As Michel de Montaigne said, “It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others”.

Sometimes life and work just gets to be a little too much and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Whether it be expectations from your boss, colleagues, friends, family or other half–or even the sky-high expectations you have of yourself.
 
Imagine you're about to miss your monthly sales targets, you do not get a crucial contract signed within an agreed timeframe, you've forgotten to answer an urgent request from one of your key customers, your boss has been calling you three times in the past two hours to get a super urgent analysis for his board meeting from you, or something went wrong which seriously affects your business and those closest to you outside of the workplace.
 
In today's fast changing and highly complex (business) world, this can happen all to easily. Occasionally, it all comes to a head and you are left feeling like you are not good enough. In times like these, it can be difficult to gain the perspective you so sorely need to pull yourself out of that terrible slump. As leaders we need to be able to identify this that both for ourselves and in our team members.
 
So how do we fix this? The following is not a panacea, it is some reflections from personal experience as a leader and of some of the help others have given and helped me. I hope they can help you also.
 
Celebrate your failures; they are a lesson
Recently was talking to some colleagues and we were reflecting on how failure in business is viewed differently in the USA compared to here at home. The view across the Atlantic is that failure is an essential part of reaching successful outcomes, we seem to have the opposite view.  Winston Churchill is famously quoted as saying “Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is courage to continue that counts.” When terrible things happen (either of our own doing or otherwise), it can be difficult to see the forest for the trees. However, in every failure or negative moment, there is a lesson to be learned. Take heart, and have faith in the fact that thanks to this experience, you will be better equipped to deal with whatever life throws at you next.
 

Progress trumps perfection, every time
It is so easy to get caught up in others’ expectations that we forget that perfection is an unrealistic (and frankly, boring) ideal. By shooting for perfection, you are setting yourself up for negative feelings and unnecessary pressure when you inevitably fall short. Progress, on the other hand, is a better measure of how brilliant you are and how much you and your organisation has grown. Celebrate every small step forward, innovate and evolve building momentum at every opportunity.
 
Your mind can be cruel; don’t always take it at its word
We are often our very worst critics. Even if we are kind to others, it can be hard for us to be nice to ourselves. We tend to judge ourselves extremely harshly, whether we’re aware of it or not, simply because we’re conditioned by society to believe we need to look or behave a certain way. When we don’t conform to these impossible standards, it’s easy to slip into negative self-talk. Be aware of this and don’t believe everything you think.
 
There is always a way to get unstuck
No matter how desperate the situation, there’s always something you can do to move forward. You may not see it right in the moment, but you will uncover it eventually, either on your own or with the help of your friends. In that “aha” moment, you’ll come to realise how close you were to the solution all along. Hindsight is always 20/20, isn’t it? Don’t lose hope; the answer you’re seeking is out there.