Labor backbencher Craig Emerson is calling for education up to Year 12 to be compulsory for all students in Australia, saying that for those not wishing to go on to higher education, they can instead undertake trades-based training in schools-based apprenticeships rather than out in the workforce.[link]
Prompting Emerson’s call is the lowering retention rates for students beyond Year 10, a change largely resulting from the current Western Australian resources boom and its employment opportunities.
Emerson’s stated concern is the long term prospects of students with lower levels of education, citing statistics from pre-boom experience in the text of a speech that will be delivered tonight to the Centre of Independent Studies in Sydney.
“Mr Howard is questioning not only the value of a university education but the very appropriateness of having a goal of as many young Australians as possible completing high school,” Dr Emerson will say tonight.
“Resources booms don’t last forever. The pre-boom experience is that several years after early school leaving, 20 per cent of males who left early were unemployed, compared with only 10 per cent who completed high school.
“The outlook for females was even worse. A massive 60 per cent of females who left school early were not in the labour force a few years after leaving, compared with only 7 per cent who finished high school.”
But what are the comparative employment figures after 10 years, or 20, rather than just “a few”? And what are the figures when accounting for the difference between women who start their families at a young age and women who start their families at a later age and drop out of the labour force then?
I’m a big fan of higher education in principle, but I’m equally aware it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, and certainly that not every teenager is either ready or willing to pursue it. I also know quite a few folks who left school early and have nonetheless gone on to higher education and the professions successfully after putting 5 or 10 years or more into the trades or service sectors, as well as others who left school early and have made good businesses and/or entrepreneurships for themselves, and yet more who have rarely been out of steady work. I don’t see that two more years of school would have made any difference for them except in wages foregone.
With the demise of not only jobs-for-life but also of the careers-for-life model as the pace of technological innovations shifts the goalposts toward ever-more-frequent retraining in every field, why pretend that young people who want more independence, or want to make a contribution to the family income, are somehow making a once-and-forever choice? Yes, I actually agree with Howard’s stance last year on this one:
“Rather than measure our education success solely by Year 12 retention rates, a better test is the success of young adults in making the transition from school to employment,” the Prime Minister said.
There needs to be debate on education policy in this country, particularly regarding the push for the death of a thousand cuts of the public school system, but Emerson’s contribution patronising and misguided.
* Rooned? [link]
Tigtog, this is really a can of worms. Lots of issues etc.
First, ‘retention rates’ are problematic in themselves. They should always be referred to as ‘apparent retention rates’ because the numbers are always distorted by interstate movements. Individual students are not tracked, cohorts are. But these cohorts are in a state of flux due to interstate migration. It is not unknown to have apparent retention rates above 100%
Nevertheless, retention rates in Qld and WA are probably worse that those published; given that those states are probably experiencing population growth.
Second Emerson is relying on well conducted studies that suggest future life chances seem to be highly correlated to levels of education.
Like you
There are any number of teachers who agree with that point of view. They argue that you can’t force feed education. You just have to wait until they are ready.
I know with my own children they would have left school ASAP if I had let them. I didn’t and if you asked them today, they would say it would have been a great mistake to leave early.
I see education as a ‘merit good’; something that cannot be appreciated until one experiences it.
Generally I agree with Emerson; even though there are many, many problems.
Emerson is suggesting that the schoolkids can choose to take up a trade as well so it’s not really the same as forcefeeding them Shakespeare for another 2 years.
Yes, this isn’t black and white. A decision was made a long time ago that people have to stay in school till the end of Year 10 for possibly similar reasons that Craig Emerson is using. There probably is some degree of arbitrariness in decisions such as these, but that isn’t necessarily a terrible thing.
If a decision was made that practically everyone or most people should stay in school till the end of Yr 12, perhaps there could be an opt-out clause for people who really really really didn’t want to do it and had an alternative scheme.
I disagree that Emerson’s contribution is patronising and misguided. He’s looking at what he perceives as a widespread problem that can dramatically affect an individual’s life and using evidence to support a potential policy.
IIRC year 10 was chosen (at least in WA) because that was what was required for the Matriculation Certificate, which was the basic requirement for most entry-level jobs and apprenticeships at the time. Year 11 and 12 were solely for those that wished to attend university, which was expensive. Later, with the ‘free education’ policy more and more attended upper school until this became the basic requirment for most entry-level jobs. As more people obtained degrees (and also due to the recession we had to have) the bar was pushed even higher for many entry-level jobs. I personally don’t have a problem with increasing the ‘exit-level’ from year 10 to 11 or 12. The job market has moved on so the education system must adapt. Years 10, 11 or 12 are all arbitrary anyway.
In QLD they have adopted the policy of ‘earning or learning’ which is self explanatory. You simply can’t exist school early and sit and watch TV all day or just ‘hang out’.
School based apprentices endorsed by Emerson have value. There is also social consequences in leaving school early.
Most of us who have enjoyed higher education, both for itself alone and also for its associated employment opportunity enhancement will encourage our own kids to pursue it – that’s going to happen anyway.
Kids from families lacking much educational background but who are nonetheless gifted students will also probably pursue education to Year 12 at least anyway.
Where I find the idea patronising and misguided is the idea of denying kids who know that they are mediocre students, or those who just want to get the hell out of Dodge for personal reasons, the chance to join the workforce at 16 and earn an independent income.
Although if a proposal of this kind is to work, much more attention needs to be given to keeping students successfully engaged with schooling so that they are getting something out of being at school until Year 12. This is a huge issue.
Also, for energetic and strong-willed near-adults of 16, 17 and 18 the school environment (uniforms, petty appearance regulations, deference, conformity, codes of conduct suitable for children but not for near-adults) can be extremely irksome. Perhaps consideration could be given to hiving off Year 11 and Year 12 teaching into a tier of institutions in which students have greater personal freedoms, rights of participation in school governance, rights to form clubs and societies, etc., but also responsibilities appropriate to near-adult status, and greater opportunities for interaction with workplaces and communities.
I agree with Jason and Sacha here – I think the sound-bite policy that “all high school students must complete Year 12″ doesn’t really capture the gist of what Emerson is saying.
I think we’d all agree that it would be good if Australia was broadly speaking more educated. Kids who aren’t attracted to the intellectual side of learning should be able to “complete” Year 12 and also pursue a trade-based qualification as part of the bargain. I know the State Governments are running some schemes of this form, but these really need to become more institutionalised and widely publicised.
Kids need to be able to know that they can effectively do “2 unit carpentry” or “2 unit plumbing” as part of their high school curriculum.
The ACT have the college system where high school is year 7-10 and college is generally a separate school of years 11 and 12. Many college teachers like that the students in the colleges are those who generally want to be there (makes for a better learning environment. From what I understand of the college environment its a lot more like a university environment as well with students treated more like adults.
Its not all a rosy picture though – there have been quite a few reports of students having transition problems between high school and college. And one reason given for the high private school attendance rate in the ACT is that some parents prefer the 7-12 model (could be because its what they’re used to when moving in from interstate).
From a teacher perspective, the thought of keeping all the students who don’t want to be there for another two years is horrible. At least as we currently stand we are able to strongly suggest to the unwilling ones that TAFE is a good option. If kids are forced to stay put the senior students in state schools who want to achieve will be held back by their comrades who can’t and won’t keep up. I’ve got year 10s who really had better leave soon, because they are floundering, and much as I’d love to say I think they would benefit from further schooling, they won’t. They just can’t catch up, and what they do instead is disrupt the entire class.
We can’t be standing year 11 and 12s outside classrooms for the whole year.
What if instead of automatically promoting to more difficult subjects, these kids had the opportunity to spend the extra years learning what they should have learnt in previous years (and more where possible). Eg, rather than making years 11 and 12 compulsory you made 12 years of schooling (not including pre school) compulsory?
Doesn’t it depend on the nature of that ‘schooling’?
Different curricula, rules, times, activities, locations etc might be tried. But they are more expensive than the classroom/lecture situation.
tigtog said:
I can understand this point of view, tigtog. Maybe the “earn or learn” policy (until what would otherwise be the end of Yr 12) is a good one. At the same time, people have decided that kids MUST go to school until the end of Yr 10, and while maturity levels are really different, it’s not a huge step to saying that kids MUST stay in education till the end of Yr 12. Or maybe it is a qualitatively a huge step, it’s hard to judge.
In my high school, a million years ago, people could do an “alternative course” which had core subjects like english and mathematics, as well as more business/trade focussed ones, eg, students could set up a small business (which could exist beyond the subject). I forget the other subjects run in the course. About 20-30 people, out of 220, say, did the alternative course.
I think I agree with Tigtog here. Surely the objective should be making more training available at any point, whether it should be vocational trades based, or calculus and shakespeare. I can think of a few people I know who left in year ten, and then after working and/or getting a trade realised that they had probably undersold themselves and went back either complete year 12 at Tafe, or got into uni mature age.
I don’t think they regretted having left formal schooling because they realise they weren’t interested at the time and were better off earning some money and actually getting into the world.
I’d suggest making it easier for people to follow these non-standard paths to higher education, is better than forcing everyone to do so.
An excellent libertarian argument.
I’m not sure I agree with any of the following points which I think can or should be implied from your post, however:
* There are no obstacles to someone who leaves school in year 10 deciding at 30 that they should be a professor of philosophy or an international banker and getting there with just a few years of cramming, courtesy of our egalitarian society.
* There is no damage done to our society and polity by exacerbating our already poor national education levels.
* Kids wouldn’t be wanting to drop out because of bad teaching, low parental or peer aspirations, bullying, or just the kind of bezerk hormones that make life as a teenager an emotional F1 ride.
* Just as many kids from wealthy private schools get the urge to leave at 16 and take up gainful employment at the nearest krispy kreme.
Etc.
I’m with Emerson on this one.
Gee, I wonder where Emerson got that idea?
Two interesting examples as I can think of a couple of people who have done more or less exactly what you describe (physics not philosophy).
I’m saying it should be easy to receive training regardless of age, and if some people wish to go into the workforce in year 10 because there are good wages being paid because of mining boom, and wish to complete their education a few years later when conditions are not so good then we should be making it easy for them to do so. They’ll probably be better for it.
I thought we were forcing them to do year 12 for their own good, but now they’re doing for the nation? I have even more issues with this kind of thinking.
They certainly would, this is in fact one of the best reasons for letting them go. They can come back later and get better teachers, less bullying and better hormonal state. All more conducive to learning.
I’m suggesting that when these kids realise at age 20, 25 or 30 that they would have been better retraining we focus on making it possible for them to do so rather than forcing people to do stuff they don’t want to for the national good.
Robert, the WA legislation appears much more flexible than what the Australian’s soundbites would have us believe Emerson is suggesting.
Even in WA I think too much emphasis is being place on purely vocational training to suit the immediate needs of employers. Surely both the student and employers in general are better served in the long term by an education which emphasises the principles of skills acquisition rather than just one vocational area?
Is simply adding an extra two years of high school onto the current system is actually going to help young adults be more employable than they are without it? Or is it yet another political platform that is simple, obvious and wrong?
And what Steve said.
Steve Edney said:
This makes sense.
Then there are cases such as that of a friend of mine (aged 25) who is currently studying a demanding classical discipline at a G8 university, achieving a mixture of HDs and Ds, and aspiring to go on to do Honours and a Ph.D. Earlier this year I asked her whether she was a high achiever at school, and her reply was “No, I got expelled.” It transpired that in early adolescence she had a serious problem with authority at the Catholic High School she went to (partly because she was and is an atheist) and was expelled at 14 for serial truancy and misbehaviour. She subsequently finished her schooling at TAFE and went to university on her own initiative.
She is not the only gifted and talented (and, as an adult, high achieving) female friend of mine who was too much for certain stuffy schools to handle as a teenager. Others include:
* a Doctoral colleague who was always being detained and denied privileges in lower secondary school for being “a rebellious little snot” and answering back to teachers;
* another Doctoral colleague expelled from a prominent Toowoomba private girls school, not for anything she’d done, but because school authorities feared that she, having a visible physical disability, would be sufficiently maladjusted to burn the school down;
* a classmate of the Toowoomba expellee who was called into the Principal’s office just before finishing school to be warned of the error and futility of her rebellious feminist ways which were contrary to the school’s ethos, and who is now a manager with Microsoft (and still a feminist and leftie).
No doubt others could cite similar cases.
Heh. State schools don’t get to expel their troublesome students (praise be).
I’m not saying I don’t think it’s sad that my errant year 10s are impossible, and that they would not benefit from a different style of education, but fact is, you’re going to affect the whole school if you forcibly detain such kids.
I don’t have a problem with completing high school at TAFE, or setting up separate ‘life skills’ or catch up years, but they’ve got to want to do that to be successful, and to ensure they don’t drag others down with them.
Of course! It’s the fairy tale stories of success in the face of adversity that get repeated. Those who have difficulties/whatever and exit early and then succeed are the exceptions rather than the rule.
Should Emerson develop public policy on the basis of research or on anecdotes?
But WPD, anyone can become President of the United States of America, doncha know.
anyone can become President of the United States of America
… tell that to Arnie…
After watching Naomi on the Channel 7 ‘current affairs’ program (for the first time I might add, but I am interested in the topic) I have now changed my view completely.
I am now convinced that it should be compulsory to end schooling at age 14 (the more traumatic the circumstance the better) so that everyone can be a success just like Derryn, Kerry and other such notables.
I now await the ABC contribution at 7.30.
We experienced the ACT college system via Offspring No 1. He got a piece of paper saying he’d been there (most of the time). With the benefit of a few years under his belt, he admitted that the college system only suited people who wanted to be there. The rest, like him, just abused the freedom (‘flexibility’). Now he’s out in the workforce, doing OK but still with no quals and it scares the p*ss out of me what will happen should things start to go pear-shaped.
phil, here in Qld we had the experience of Hervey Bay Senior College. Education Minister Powell was the local member and big, big dollars were spent to make the Senior College very attractive. It was not enough, the punters were making the ‘wrong choices’. So Minister Powell wiped years 11 and 12 from the local high school and made them go to the senior college.
Strange, the parents still didn’t like it. They didn’t like the ‘freedom’ given to their teenage children.
With the election of the Goss government in 1989, Years 11 and 12 were restored to the local High School.
Do I have to tell you which institution then prospered?
In Queensl and now, since Anna Bligh’s reforms, it’s compulsory for all people aged 16 and 17 to either be in school, working or training.
In the spirit of evidence or anecdote driven policy, what is it like for kids since those reforms kicked in, Kim?
Robert,
A bloke called Latham was talking about this when he was the shadow minister who in turn got it from the OECD.
Good of WA to eventually catch up.
I don’t understand why people who leave school early can’t catch up on qualifications and education later. There are quite a few technical colleges where students who have been in the workforce some years have decided to do their HSC. Why does education have to be completed by the time someone is 18? Don’t people know there is such a thing as later – especially when you’ve had time to think about it and you’ve seen a bit of the world?
I dropped out of uni at 19 and completed it 15 years later, for instance. Distance education is getting better and better due to improved ICT and besides, what on earth is Lifelong Learning for then?
I don’t like this on first principles. But as a contingency plan its not bad because for sure we need a helluva lot more tradesmen.
But compulsory?
A compromise might be allowing older people to go back to school and or Tafe to get these trades skills on the cheap. Some kids at that age just have to get away for awhile. It sounds like prison to me.
Why IS there this discrimination against people who have left school at 15?
If they want to go back and learn a trade at 25 why can’t the do that? Because the people who have gone onto year 12 have taken another extra two years on the public tit then them. So why not let these prodigals go back and get the two years they didn’t get the first time round?
The early-leavers get ROONED only because we choose to shut the window on them.
>>>>>>>>>>
The above is not to say I don’t want the whole cess-pit defunded tommorrow.
Whoa Megan.
Didn’t realise you had already been thinking along the same lines.
Its a failure to treat everyone equally is what it is. Some kids don’t have the stable untroubled home-life to concentrate on school at that age. And its a good thing to get out of kindy, get your head straight, see what the real world is like, and then go back to school.
That would actually be better more generally I would think. Kids who didn’t have a clear focused idea of what to do with their life getting away from school for 1 or 2 years at 15 and then knowing they could go back and go after what it is they’ve decided to go after in a focused if not obssesive way.
Lifelong learning = tertiary education voucher. Stop funding universities. Give all high school graduates a voucher redeemable at any cerified tertiary education institution of choice, regardless of whether it is a TAFE or Uni or college of music or IT college or whatever. Let them all compete for the kids.
Right.
We could go to Jasons system TOMMORROW.
Then reduce these vouchers over time in the ongoing efforts to reduce churning.
But the point is we can get to a very workable market in education very quickly, without pain, or great disruption for current students, using Jasons pathway.
Roger Collins at the AGSM points out that if people do believe in life long learning then only under degree courses are worth it.
Universities etal should then essentially be offering refresher courses in the specialised areas.