Gembrook MP Tammy Lobato and Chisholm Institute administrators, along with Chisholm students, welcomed news that a technical secondary college would be built on the Clyde Road campus. From left, Ms Lobato, acting director of Chisholm School of Management Di Saunders, Chisholm manager marketing and corporate communications Brenda Pritchard, Chisholm administrator Irene Wallis, and students Sivasothy Thirukumaran, Aruna Ratnasekera, Kim Batchelor, Dovena Hendricks, Barbara Heywood, Lee Barrett, Stuart Clark and Caley Blackman.FEW government decisions made during the past decade will have been greeted with more support and enthusiasm than announcements last year and last week that our federal and state governments will reinstate the technical school system alongside the high school system.
Closure of technical schools nearly two decades ago forced students into the high school system and on a pathway to university.
Former LaTrobe MP Bob Charles repeatedly warned that many really good jobs did not require the employee to hold tertiary qualifications.
Many young people felt a growing tension and sense of failure because of expectations being placed on them that they could not meet when they should have been given other options and encouragement.
Some could not cope with the higher level of academic education and, ironically, did not need to.
Young people should never have had the secondary technical education option taken away from them and society is the worse because it was lost.
Because it was removed, many had to look toward university, did not want to go to university, and when they got there couldn’t handle it.
Lots of people like to work with their hands and, believe me, those people, we have come to realise, are desperately needed.
They could turn back to the TAFE colleges that I thought early on could have been a replacement for technical schools, but TAFE hierarchies saw their system as being at a far higher level, and tertiary.
They came to sit alongside the university system rather than the high school system and were for older students in retraining and catchup modes.
Computerisation has also opened the way for a limitless range of new learning and qualifications.
Although this new age revolution has accommodated a large percentage of students at many skill levels, being taught at TAFE and university, we still need houses built, pipes fixed, electricians, mechanics and fitters and turners in traditional and vital trades.
Ask anyone who wants something fixed around the house.
People become highly skilled in those traditional trades and they do not need a university education to acquire those skills.
Now we have the State Government providing four technical schools in Victoria, one at Berwick, and the Federal Government providing nearly 30 regional technical schools across Australia.
My view is that this is top news.
Hopefully, the state and federal governments’ versions of technical training in these new schools will not emulate TAFE training, which I expect will remain at a higher, even ‘tertiary’ level, wisely or not.
Along with a host of politicians, councillors and young people I heard voicing views on this one last week, I welcome the rethinking on technical education.
