It is heartening to see that the new Minister for Education, Lin Thorpe, has signalled that there will be no roll-back of the Tasmanian Tomorrow reforms.
VETnetwork Australia, a national organisation representing and supporting the growth and uptake of vocational education and training in senior secondary schools, welcomed the advent of the Polytechnic in particular. It sees in the Polytechnic an education and training arrangement far more likely to deliver high quality, industry-standard training for young people entering the workforce than was ever the case in secondary college or indeed in TAFE.
The major appeal of the Polytechnic and Academy arrangements is that they allow a focus on specific education and training for the world of work and for unfettered university preparation. These are essential for the future growth and prosperity of Tasmania.
Tasmania’s performance on any measure of education and training particularly in the young adult and adult segments of the population is relatively poor. Around 50% achieved the senior secondary completion certificate last year (the new TCE), less than 20% of any age cohort will go on to university from school or college, it has one of the lowest proportions of the population with a post-year 10 qualification. And its been getting worse!
The matriculation colleges when they were established first in Hobart and Launceston in the mid-1960s were national ground breakers, promising to prepare young people for university in separate, young adult oriented colleges. They were unashamedly academic, promising sound preparation for university courses in Arts, Science, Engineering, Medicine, Education and the like. They attracted the best and brightest for both teachers and students – young honours students on Education Department bonded studentships dominated the staffrooms. TAFE was there for students wanting trade qualifications or more general paraprofessional courses.
By the 1980’s however with youth unemployment a growing issue and an increasing shift toward a better skilled employment market, the now secondary colleges began to accept a more diverse student body. Increasingly a more heterogenous student group enrolled – and the secondary colleges moved to develop a wider range of course choices.
The Labor Government of the time sought to accommodate the more diverse student population into a new Community College model. Derived in part from similar colleges in the USA and the UK, they sought to bring together TAFE and secondary colleges along with adult education. The model was hugely promising in terms of providing community access to a broad range of academic, trades and community based programs. Alanvale College in Launceston was the crucible – and it was a disaster as poor leadership, internecine union skirmishes and political interference consigned it to the scrap heap. Subsequently, Education Minister at the time, Max Bingham, scrapped the community college program in 1982.
It seems that with the implementation of the Tasmania Tomorrow reforms history may be repeating itself. Imaginative public policy with the potential to address many of the issues relating to Tasmania’s low skill base, poor school completion, and reluctance to add post-school qualifications is being resisted by a section of the community actually charged with its successful delivery. That is, government sector employees have a responsibility to deliver on government policy and their entitlement to be critical of such policy is restricted by the charter under which they are employed. However, there is a tradition particularly amongst professional groups in this state to assume that they have the right to actively work against policy and its implementation.
Of course the Australian Education Union (AEU) has become the major voice for criticism of the Tasmania Tomorrow reforms providing a voice for the disaffected particularly at the former Hobart College site of the Polytechnic. It is interesting to note that many of the arguments voiced by the AEU were used originally to object to the establishment of the matriculation colleges in the late 1960s. They are all about the speculative impact of change on teaching conditions and how students are being adversely affected. There are some extraordinary claims being made – that year 11 and 12 students will be running child care organisations; that young college students will be forced to work with adult students and that VET teachers won’t have their qualifications recognised.
More recently criticism by the AEU has become increasingly desperate if not hysterical. Greg Brown, leader of the AEU’s secondary college sector refers to the “massive number of problems” which have been identified and to the fact that Tasmania Tomorrow “…has crushed the professional lives of many of your colleagues and is creating two classes of students”. There is reference to the creation of a second class of student in the Polytechnic compared with the “elite” students of the Academy.
In all of the rhetoric levelled against the Tasmania Tomorrow reforms, little mention is made about the impact on students and their learning opportunities. There is growing evidence that many students are beginning to take advantage of the greatly increased flexibility of the Polytechnic’s programs. Young people leaving year 10 can now embark on a wide range of mainstream VET training programs without experiencing the barriers that limited college VET to Certificate I and II levels.
There are new and innovative approaches. There are instances where, for example a year 12 student from the Academy wanted to take a year off to help his father, a professional builder, build a new home. His parents were delighted with the fact that he could get his house-building recognised under a Certificate II in Construction delivered by the Polytechnic, a qualification that would also contribute toward the requirements of the new TCE. Another involved a young woman wanting to do a Certificate III in 3 Dimensional Design as well as working toward university entrance into a degree in Architecture. Although she chose to enrol in the Canberra Institute of Technology through an external studies program, it was the range of courses offered by the Polytechnic that inspired her. There are many more stories of a similar nature confirming how students are warming to the Tasmania Tomorrow reforms.
There is also growing evidence, anecdotal at the moment but likely to be confirmed in performance data in due course, that young people once marginalised by colleges and virtually denied access to TAFE, are now engaging in Polytechnic programs and just as importantly are not dropping out.
Senior secondary along with apprenticeship and traineeship non-completion has long been a problem in Tasmania. A destination study undertaken by the Department of Education which tracked the entire 2001 year 10 student cohort (6990 students in total) showed that while 83% of the cohort enrolled in a year 11 school or college program only 63% continued onto year 12. For students in the government colleges the figure was even worse with only 43% continuing on to year 12.
Quite clearly and for whatever reasons, the secondary college system was not holding students through to year 12 completion. While it is true that a proportion of these went on with apprenticeships and traineeships and other training (around 11% of the total cohort) and 9% were employed a significant proportion remained under engaged in the Tasmanian economy. Much of the employment undertaken was low paid and part-time in the service industries particularly in hospitality and retail with few long-term career opportunities.
There is, therefore, a real risk that by rolling back the Tasmania Tomorrow reforms there will be a return to a senior secondary system that had not been working for some time. Despite the significant work undertaken by colleges to increase the range of non-academic options designed to attract students for whom by year 10 school had become the least attractive and preferred option (getting a job was frequently cited as the preference) in many ways they have failed.
The Academy by focussing unashamedly on university preparation, the Polytechnic on vocationally-based qualifications aligned with real industry demand and the Skills Institute on trades related, para-professional and professional qualifications offer a highly appropriate and workable model for up-skilling Tasmania. While it may be true that the implementation of Tasmania Tomorrow has been a little hasty, and there have been systems level difficulties always to be expected when complex organisational mergers take place, the sheer potential for it to deliver a better trained, better skilled and better educated Tasmanian workforce is undeniable.
“Mike Frost is Chair of VETnetwork Australia, a national organisation representing the interests of teachers and professionals working in vocational education in schools, school-to-work and career development. He has been a leader in the development of VET in Schools in Tasmanian secondary colleges over many years and more recently in policy development and implementation in post-compulsory education and training.”
