Page 3595 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 26 August 2008
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early to mid-80s. It was a great idea to push every child to year 12 and then into a university degree course.
I do not entirely attack that trend. I think that was a laudable attempt to perhaps increase skills training in the country. I think the original intention was absolutely spot on but the implementation of it and the management of it went skew-whiff. In my view, we need to reverse that 20-year trend, at both commonwealth and state level, of pushing all kids to degree training. What was the use of gaining a degree in basket weaving when a student picking up solid skills qualifications should have been far more desirable? I am very pleased to see that the Standing Committee on Education, Training and Young People did see fit to note that this was a trend that certainly needed some reversing.
To their credit, the ACT government has undertaken some initiatives now and in recent years to increase our skills training capabilities at the secondary level. Of course, they have had bipartisan support in that. Numerous shadow education ministers on this side of the house have been pushing for that for a very, very long time. Indeed, one of our previous ministers for education, I know, was pushing that line as well—increased capacities for skills training, VET training, in our secondary schools. The committee has picked up on that and come up with some pretty good ideas on what we should be doing to refocus our emphasis on those issues.
I particularly like recommendation No 2, which says:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government commissions a review of careers advisory capacity within all ACT schools with a view to identifying appropriate bench marks for advisory services within school communities, the capacity for career relevant activities to be integrated into the curriculum, and the most effective model for achieving engagement between school communities, VET providers and industries.
I do not know whether my two colleagues agree with me—I think they probably would—that that is the central recommendation, at least in my opinion, coming out of this inquiry. It is so important that we establish the mechanisms in our secondary schools to identify very early in the learning cycle what our kids are good at and identify ways and means of encouraging kids at the 13, 14-year mark in relation to what we believe or what the system identifies are their strengths as well as their weaknesses; and, where they may not be academically built to go to a traditional tertiary stream later in life but where they demonstrate skills and attitudes badly needed in the workforce in other areas, then they need to be encouraged and counselled early in life and earlier in life than what is currently the case.
I think the minister has been looking at ideas where we might increase some of the more, shall we say, hardware side or technical side subject areas earlier in school simply to at least introduce and provide a sniff of what might be available in life earlier in the high school experience, with a view to showing kids that there are experiences that can be pursued and with a view to perhaps streaming them in the skills area. That is what recommendation No 2 goes to the heart of.
We also know that we have a very small percentage—but, unfortunately, a percentage—of kids in early high school years who are at risk of not completing
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