Australian technical colleges: not the solution to the skills shortage

In early 2005, the Australian government announced its plans to establish technical colleges around Australia as a way of tackling the issue of skill shortages. This discussion paper is the Australian Education Union’s (AEU’s) response to this initiative, which, as the title suggests, is ‘not the solution to the skills shortage’. Problems with the Australian technical colleges (ATCs) highlighted in the paper include: they undermine the concept of comprehensive schooling and are a throwback to the old system of channelling students into specialist schools offering limited educational opportunities; they will be closely connected to one or two local businesses, providing what they want but limiting the capacity of students to move to other jobs; students not in ATCs will find it harder to get jobs particularly in regional areas; because of their size (only 300 students), ATCs will offer extremely limited choice of subjects with restricted opportunities to change direction; the trades selected by the Australian government are traditionally male dominated and areas of skills shortage such as child care are not mentioned in any of the material; not only will they receive all the funding that other public or private schools do, they will also get extra from the Australian government and probably from business while ordinary schools will continue to struggle to find adequate funding for their vocational education and training (VET) courses; it will further encourage competition between education and training sectors for already scarce resources while creating unnecessary and wasteful duplication of existing school and TAFE facilities; and as TAFEs are already experiencing shortages of trained trades teachers in many areas, duplication of courses and facilities is likely to exacerbate this problem. The paper also suggests ways to improve the delivery of VET in schools, including: a positive and collaborative partnership between all levels of government, and relevant community and industry stakeholders; more funding and support for existing schools and VET courses; provision of regional/cluster VET coordinators for all VET students to provide closer links between existing courses and business and industry; and more careers advisors. Show less