So says Ben Eltham at Polliegraph:
It’s taken until week 3 of the campaign for a truly bad policy to emerge from either of the major Parties. I’m exempting the invasion of intervention in the Northern Territory here because it was before the campaign proper. Kevin Rudd’s announcement of freeing up defence land for housing was close, but no cigar - while it will have next to no impact on housing affordability, it won’t actively make things worse.
But yesterday’s announcement by the Prime Minister of his ‘100 new technical colleges‘ is a truly bad policy. When I say bad, I mean not only dubious in scope and unlikely to be well implemented. I also mean a policy that flies in the face of accepted wisdom, even common sense, and will actually make matters worse. It is, as they say in AFL, a clanger.”
Personally, I’d throw in the plethora of road funding announcements (by both sides) as bad policy as well, but that’s by the by. The fact is that, on the face of it, Eltham is right. This is just needless duplication of responsibilities between the state and federal government.
Not to mention that the entire premise behind these colleges - that we should start training 16 year old kids for very specific career paths - is kind of dubious, as one letter writer to The Age puts it:
Tech schools were a failure in the past. They were male-dominated and they forced a career path decision at the age of 11. Once made, it was impossible to change.
Technical education is based on a false premise: adroitness replaces intellectual backwardness. In all my years teaching art and crafts, I saw no evidence for that theory.
All children should experience a genuine school life, reaching across technology to the arts and sciences. Reinventing a failed, divisive past is a waste of money and denies children their rights.
So we are left with several questions for the government. What’s your justification that pushing 16 year old kids onto very career-specific educational pathways is a good thing? And, what’s the point of having two parallel government-administered technical education systems in Australia, complete with two sets of bureaucracies administering them - creating all manner of administrative headaches for the various trades that the graduates of these schools will hopefully enter? If the Liberals really think that the federal government can run technical education better, why aren’t they proposing to take over the existing TAFE colleges?
Back in my day we used to have these things called TAFE before the government ripped the guts out of it.
I remember attending a conference in 1998 where a speaker warned that unless something was done to reverse the direction of VET policy, Australia would face a serious skills shortage within a few years.
Howard’s animus against TAFE I suspect stems from the fact that the Keating agenda (which was remarkably reformist and the sort of thing that we aren’t seeing from the “education revolution”) for VET explicitly critiqued much training as being far too employer driven, and too narrow in its response to local rather than transferable skills needs. As with so many other areas, Australian management looked for the short term gain rather than the long term. The unions played a big role in pushing for portable and transferable VET qualifications, and that’d be another reason why he’s miffed.
He was very happy to abolish ANTA (which was a good model) and to introduce “contestability” (code for effective privatisation). But he’s shied away from taking over the underfunded state systems for the same reason he doesn’t want to touch hospitals - tinkering at the edges and intervening selectively via threats and funding agreements gives him political purchase without responsibility for overall outcomes.
It’s a pretty sad story, and typical of the narrow minded ideological pig-headedness, personal vindictiveness and short term thinking that is Howardianism!
It’s the one policy that’s really made me angry so far this campaign - what a complete, abject, stupid way to waste my money. If this is what my taxes are spent on, I’d like a bigger tax cut, thankyou very much.
This is a very stupid policy. As Robert says, it’s duplication of existing infrastructure done in a piecemeal way without a solid and logical purpose behind it. I hope the rest of the nation sees this for what it is: an attempt to grab the votes of the “aspirationals” who want to improve their skills and don’t realise that Howard gutted TAFE.
In other news, Tony Abbott proposed to solve Australia’s health problems by setting up 100 new Australian Cure Facilities around the country. They are expected to conduct 30,000 heart operations a year by 2009 and will have no waiting lists, as well as dedicated miscarriage facilities in all waiting rooms.
Makes about as much sense to me.
Robert and Mark have both hit the nail on the head - it is a bizarre policy that helps no-one.
In terms of technical training (for the engineering/scientific types among us) the people coming out of school/uni/tafe at the moment seem to be lacking in hands-on type skills and how these relate to theory.
Unfortunately the theory and practice are still regarded (in Australia at least) as being two separate fields. I’ve been lucky in my career to mesh both but it does no good to have a bored student learning how a laser works by looking only at energy level diagrams, or a lecturer attempting to demonstrate radio-frequency principals using 50-year old RF gear which works 10% of the time.
High-school has to cover a broad range of subjects and this can only be done when the tools (be they art supplies, lathes, books or computers) are useful, and the teachers are able to get on with the job (and are good at the job).
The last thing they need is a pig-headed minister dictating what they should concentrate on (and asking for five tonnes of documentation to prove it’s being done!).
I would suggest the TAFE courses could be made more relevant to industry by having a higher-priced short-course option (as opposed to the current 6/12 month part time structure). eg. A course on cleanroom procedures and methods could be run as a 1 week intensive course or a part-time 3 month course (which can be tied in at high-school level). Unfortunately as Mark has mentioned Australian industry has always been short-sighted on the training side - Aussie industry really needs to get it’s s$% together and realise that an unskilled employee can be made skilled by using high-quality training (instead of fire/re-hire). Even this simple option is missing from most of the current TAFE courses - that’s if the course is within a 2 hr drive anyway (yes in Sydney!).
As for the governement - enough with the duplication, use the money to reset/rebuild the existing systems for greater efficiency (and not the bean-counting kind).
In terms of the arts or social sciences - I have no idea of the situation and leave it to those who know better what their needs are (presumably even more underfunded).
I went - or, more accurately, was sent - to a technical school in Melbourne’s northern suburbs in the 1970s. Apart from the proximity of the school to our family home, I was sent there on the basis of parental expectations of what my vocation in life would be - which was not expected to entail a university education. As it happened my parents’ intentions were thwarted because (a) I was hopeless in trade subjects and (b) the school had some very good science and social science teachers who had no qualms about empowering and encouraging their students to rise above their allotted station in life. The teachers were also very strongly unionised and had very firm ideas about innovation in curriculum and school governance which happened to gel with my own ideas on those matters.
Having said that, the idea of re-establishing a bisectoral school system whose basic premise is that kids’ career choices can be made (and made for, rather than by, them) at 16, let alone 11, is seriously bad policy.
It’s bad policy because it’s driven by ideological considerations. Howard’s mob remains on a mission from god to destroy unions and unionism wherever they find it, and this obsession is coupled here with a crusade to cleanse education from the crippling moral decay brought about by years of infiltration by the dreaded left. I suspect that it’s a Costello/Abbott-led thing more than a Howard favourite. The two of them seem determined to keep fighting student union battles from the 1970s until the end of time.
It’s the kind of horrendously inefficient outflanking strategy that’s only possible if you’re prepared to commit almost limitless resources. The colleges established to date have mostly been rank failures but that doesn’t worry them - they’re in for the long haul. And all for what, at the end of the day? To have teachers on AWAs without union involvement. That’s objective number one.
Objective number two is to take over community services using Howard’s favoured new ‘community board’ model that he’s also pushing for hospitals and justifying with the new doctrine of expediency: people don’t care who runs things they’re only interested in results. This opportunistic approach is intended to bring about the end of federalism by stealth.
So the favoured model would see colleges and hospitals and schools run by local boards appointed by the federal government, delivering community services according to centralised rules written in Canberra to satisfy the ideological preferences of the ageing class warriors in the Liberal Party. None of it makes the slightest sense and it lacks any sound evidentiary justification. But it would leave Howard’s mob as reformers fit to mention in the same breath as Paul Keating, at least in their own minds, and for these exhausted corrupt old bastards that’s all that’s left in politics worth worrying about.
I mean if we can send troops to war to preserve the prestige of the United States, surely we can run a few colleges to preserve the prestige of John Howard’s cabinet.
Paul and Ken,
You both put it far more elegantly than I have. Paul, isn’t it amazing the difference a good teacher (of any subject) can make!
Ken, unfortunately I think the Howard government has ignored the results and justified the means. Centralised rules seem well and good until you realise that’s how the Soviets used to do things…
It’s bad policy but great politics.
It’s aimed directly at those who are getting on in life, who did not finish year 12, went for a trade and have stuck with it. Howard is validating their life choice.
When young whipper-snappers like me (yes, you too Ken and Paul!) come along and say perhaps it’s not such a good idea, what these people hear is some cafe-latte sipping pinko-lefto etc etc saying they were too stupid to finish school.
They hear us saying your work is beneath us, you made a bad choice and we don’t want our kids to turn out like you.
Of course, that is not what we are saying, but then, that is why it’s such good politics. Better to just cop it sweet and then, once Rudd gets into office, quietly fold whatever Howard has already built into the TAFE system.
sjk: I think that every time I call a tradie and they charge me $100 for a 15-minute job…and then try and do the job myself and at best do it half-right
This criticism is confused thinking and not true most of the time.
Most successful copywriter I’ve met was a fitter and turner trained by the NZ railways , his boss an ex labourer.
Lifelong learning isn’t cramped by learning . You may start at any point but it goes many places.Nurses now MBA holding administrators , salespeople who are teachers- maybe there is a bit of snobbery involved with the response here at LP.
” They were male-dominated and they forced a career path decision at the age of 11. Once made, it was impossible to change.”
The specifics of the funding of education are a different issue - more funding is bad because it isn’t going to certain favoured areas ?
“It’s aimed directly at those who are getting on in life, who did not finish year 12, went for a trade and have stuck with it. Howard is validating their life choice..” And this sucks because ? Their kids want skills too.
sjk “…what these people hear is some cafe-latte sipping pinko-lefto etc etc saying …”
That is always the risk with Rodent dogwhistles.
The only active counter might be to reiterate that a whole new system is not needed and would be expensive and wasteful to set up. All that needs to be done is to fix the existing TAFE system.
But then, would you trust a Rodent to fix a broken TAFE?
“Better to just cop it sweet and then, once Rudd gets into office, quietly fold whatever Howard has already built into the TAFE system”
Pragmatically, yes. As with everything else, say nothing now to spook the yahoos. Get Rudd in, and then pressure him as necessary to clean up all the various piles of rodent shite.
These technical colleges were all over the place in the old days and older tradsmen still remember them fondly. Labor got rid of them because they felt a university education is more important and more valuable. Howard wants them back because they worked, and the tradies who remember them think so too.
Now you have Kevin Rudd saying “Labor beleives a trade certificate is just as important is just as important as a uni degree”. Anybody who remembers Labor getting rid of the old system of colleges knows that just isn’t true.
Really? When precisely were they “got rid of” in each state? Who was in government at the time?
I think they’re referring to the fact that secondary “technical schools” got renamed by state Labor governments, certainly in Victoria, in the early 1990s.
Frankly, putting specialist vocational education in the tertiary sector where it belongs strikes me as a far better idea than saying that tradies don’t any of that high-faultin’ book learnin that the rich kids pick up in them fancy “high schoools”.
For what it’s worth, at the other end of the scale I reckon the education of the average graduate of, say, Scotch College or the Kings’ School (or Presbyterian Ladies’ College) might be improved by teaching them how to make a miter joint (or, even more useful, how to fix a leaky tap). But that’s just me…
BoredinHK: even if tech schools were a great idea - which I don’t accept, by the way - I don’t see the purpose in two levels of government running two separate vocational education systems. It’s needless duplication, it’s highly inefficient, it’s completely contrary to the principles of small government that conservatives are supposed to stand for.
Robert Merkel said:
They are picking up the skills they need from the tradie-trained at Bunnings. Wesfarmers has made a fortune. Capitalism at work, supply and demand, heh, heh.
Perhaps there’s a message in the events surrounding one of the 28 original Howard technical colleges that I am familiar with. After a year long struggle to find and establish their own quarters, recruit the couple of dozen students and find the instructors, this particular ATC accepted an offer from the local TAFE to house the venture.
A bit of common sense all round apart from the momentary embarrassment, but please don’t tell John.