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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 9 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 3349 ..

MR PRATT (continuing):

More importantly though the inquiry found that the very committed stakeholders in the VET arena that we spoke to still feel there is a long way to go to make VET the respected and fundamentally important education pathway that it should be. I would commend this inquiry observation to my colleagues in this place perhaps even above all others.

The inquiry found VET in the ACT offers a surprisingly wide array of courses and more importantly is very flexible in its despatch of those courses. For me, the most important aspect of this inquiry was to discover the opportunities available in the VET sector, which allows the community to more productively engage at-risk youth at school and who are leaving school. It struck me that there is a lot of work for the community to do with our disengaged and disruptive students, and VET is an excellent vehicle for this purpose. To this end I particularly commend recommendation 10, which deals with at-risk people.

Further, I would highlight a couple of other recommendations I personally commend to my colleagues in this place. Recommendation 1 is the need for greater investment in VET in secondary schools and colleges. I would point out an old favourite of mine, which is the need for high schools to increase their technically oriented school subjects which would at least give prospective VET students preliminary engagement, particularly in their early high school years which is where we need to sell the strengths of VET.

I would also highlight recommendation 4, which seeks to provide additional assistance to young kids or adults who are doing it tough to afford VET entry. I think that's a very important recommendation. Recommendation 5 deals with industries with a very low base of trained workers and the marriage between those industries and VET training providers so that we as a community both, the training institutions and the industries that lack a capability, seek a marriage to get together skills and capabilities which we know the ACT badly needs.

Recommendation 29 deals with additional professional development for TAE staff in direct industry experience, the need to encourage and assist our teachers and trainers to become more competent. They are already competent but of course we should always give them the opportunities to seek excellence in their training skills, and a closer marriage perhaps between the training providers and institutions is needed.

For me, I think the highlight of this inquiry was the visit to Copland College, particularly meeting the teacher and the students of the mechanical course. If there was ever an example of a class where a teacher and children at risk, students at risk, have joined together to produce a successful outcome, this to me was it. Indeed, in that class there were a significant number of boys who had actually turned their lives around and that outcome really went back to the skills of the teacher, his passion, and of course the great support structures in Copland College.

I would finish by also thanking Mr Skinner, our committee secretary, for his expert guidance. I note sadly that he is leaving us but he won't be leaving this place. He did a great job and I do welcome Kerry as well on board. I do commend the report of this inquiry to my colleagues in this place. I look forward to seeing how well we can mobilise the many good recommendations in that inquiry.

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