My dad Sam taught sheet metal work at CBS Glen Road a lifetime ago.

On Sundays, he would bring me over to the empty workrooms as he caught up on class chores he had put off or fired up the soldering iron to adapt a broken roller skate for the back wheel of my beer-top adorned guider. It was a well-lit, wondrous, open space where, despite the war outside, welding and emotional sparks flew.

My da had the most challenging of callings - training fearless young men, schooled in gun battles and bottle-throwing, for jobs they would never get in Mackie's or Hughes' Tool. Nevertheless, I never heard him do anything but encourage his young charges. And though he carried a double strap, in the years since his passing, I have never heard his wayward pupils, cast-offs from the 11+ lottery, say a bad word about Mr Millar.

My father moved on by and by to special needs education with the Christian Brothers at a period in the eighties and early nineties when struggling children formerly written off as 'mooners' were starting to be diagnosed with autism, ADHD and dyslexia. 

I never followed my father's vocation but watching him work imbued in me an abiding respect for those who work on our educational frontlines. And those frontlines aren't in Rathmore or Aquinas, Inst or Methody. Rather they're in All Saints, and St Joseph's, in St Vincent's and Breda Academy. 

And they are also in training programmes such as Workforce on the Springfield Road where heroic work is going on to repair the damage caused by the 11+ system which continues to divide our children along class and economic lines. 

Because we have a lopsided education system - really excellent results at the top but a long tail of under-achievement at the bottom — the work going on at skills training and apprenticeships programmes for teenagers is the future's frontline.

FÁILTE: Former Workforce trainee Niamh at reception
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FÁILTE: Former Workforce trainee Niamh at reception

Many of the young folks attending our training schemes have been failed by the education system — fortunately in projects like Workforce, they are being picked up, dusted down and then built back up by the compassionate tutors who teach them not just life skills but also discipline, commitment and accountability.

I was privileged to be shown around the Springfield Road hq of Workforce yesterday - they also have satellite training facilities across West Belfast and a base in North Belfast - by Manager Paul Boyle and got a warm welcome from receptionist Niamh - herself a Workforce grad - and from painting and decorating tutor Sandra and student Jessica.

Workforce is yet another community-rooted enterprise ensuring our children enjoy the dignity of employment, a fruitful career and a few pound in their pockets - all while making a contribution as positive citizens. 

30 years ago, some third level careerists were sniffing out opportunities along the peaceline amidst talk of a new university campus on the Springfield Road. At the time, I remember a senior university figure at a public meeting predicting that the locals might even get work as janitors in the new facility. I was minded to tell him that in our family, my astrophysicist professor brother is referred to as "the slow one in the family" but kept my counsel.

TOP MAN: Paul Boyle, Workforce manager welcomes the author to the Springfield Road headquarters of the training charity
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TOP MAN: Paul Boyle, Workforce manager welcomes the author to the Springfield Road headquarters of the training charity

Both the dream of a peaceline campus and that academic are long gone. Indeed, Mackie's up the road and Hughes Tool are toast too. But the community endures and its thirst for learning, nurtured by caring teachers, has never been extinguished. Noble as the role of janitor is, I saw in Workforce that the community's sights are set on a wide range of life-long, well-paid jobs which form the foundation of strong families.

The teenage trainees I met yesterday are more a Gilder than a guider generation but in their earnest faces in the woodwork class and the vehicle repair workshop, I saw tomorrow's sparks fly.