In the minds of many New Zealanders, university degrees carry greater status than industry qualifications. But many tradespeople earn as much, or more, than an average university graduate. Many tradies also go on to start highly successful businesses.
Financially, the plumber may well come out ahead of the public servant. Why, then, are industry qualifications not valued more highly than they are?
The root issue is cultural bias in favour of academic learning, but the traditional school curriculum also contributes to the higher status of degrees. Most subjects are derived from university disciplines, creating a mindset that school is preparation for university.
Things might be about to change. Under the government’s proposal for new school qualifications, students will be able to study ‘industry-led’ subjects in Years 12 and 13. The goal is to improve the quality, status and uptake of vocational education in schools.
It is a worthy aim – but challenging to deliver on. My new report for the Initiative, Working Knowledge, makes recommendations for policy settings that will help make industry-led subjects a success.
The first challenge will be getting the curricula right. Industry Skills Boards (ISBs) will write them. That should ensure that the industry-led subjects are well aligned with the needs of business. But ISBs must consult with schools and subject associations to ensure that they are also appropriate for secondary students and deliverable for schools.
On the implementation side, few schools are set up to offer strong vocational programmes. They should receive per-enrolment funding to support industry-led subjects. Schools could use it to employ additional staff, enrol students part-time in tertiary institutions, or engage employers to offer work-integrated learning opportunities.
The funding should be redirected from the university component of the fees-free tertiary entitlement. That expensive scheme has done nothing to boost university enrolments.
Because many students see vocational education as low-status, they may need incentives to consider industry-led subjects.
Industry-led subjects could potentially yield industry certificates alongside contributing to school qualifications. And an Industry Award, equivalent in status and workload to University Entrance, would provide a clearly signalled pathway from school to industry training.
Industry-led subjects are a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change the game for vocational education. We owe it to our young people to get it right.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE.
10 comments:
Should have difficult, rigorous high school tests that only 10% can pass. They go to university. The rest go to trade schools and apprenticeships to become plumbers, nurses, watch repairers, carpenters, etc.
They’d need a leftist exam before they’re allowed to go to university. Woke nonsense.
Federation University in Ballarat (Aus) has academic and vocational programmes running alongside one another under the same roof.
Some NZ high schools are very well set up for vocational programmes and offer technical qualifications up to NCEA level 3 (yes, I know that's being phased out...... a pity in my opinion, given the versatility of that system). In this context, it is noteworthy that all-boys high schools are ahead of co-eds as the demand for tech/vocat educ in an all-boys school is higher than in a coed and so a better material and human resource base is warranted.
Readers may be interested in my 2005 paper "Smoothing the secondary-tertiary education interface: developments in New Zealand following the National Qualifications Framework reforms", Journal of Vocational Education and Training, Vol. 57, pp. 411-418.
I note an article in the Herald this morning that ''teachers'' (presumably correct thinking union ones) are concerned there is not enough treaty in the new curriculum. It seems teachers, at least a good number, are merely ideologically driven by their own truths and self-virtue...they are now predators....predators of the minds of young people.
The elephant in the NZ classroom is that we have appallingly, one of the longest tails of under achievements in the developed world.
The bottom 25% of achievers in the classroom will either end up on welfare , in jail or doing menial tasks. Forget trades or vocational training for them since they are only semi -literate and numerate .
If you focused on this group, all students would
benefit because what these low achievers need most is the ingredient missing in our schools- structured learning. This means behaviourist - traditional methods coupled with the findings of cognitive science and this would also produce more STEM subject students.
There are far too many social - science graduates as a product, from my perspective of constructivist progressive education.
Primary schools are where these changes to more structured learning are required most. Some progressive ideas can be successfully applied at higher levels of learning but get them out of dominating crucial early learning .
Despite Nicola's changes to literacy and numeracy I still see students with difficulties with the basics because primary teachers are having to make such a momentous changes in their teaching methods and still adhere to old ineffective ways. I have encountered teachers who have no idea about how to actually teach effectively .
Agreed, a giant tail. Educators and teachers unions complain about comparative scores, PISA, etc. Another way to measure NZ's schools: get on reddit and see what parents say. 'We moved back to Ireland and our children were two years behind in math', e.g. Somebody in Education could create a MA from such evidence. Nope, never will happen.
Most of those bottom 25% are BOYS.
Boys' underachievement has been given some serious attention elsewhere, such as the HOR Inquiry into the Education of Boys in Aussie and the recent UK parliamentary Education Committee inquiry into same.
The answer, or at least much of an answer, in my opinion lies in technical and vocational education in schools. Classroom physics and chemistry may not interest many 13-15-year-old boys, but make motor mechanics a topic and they switch on - and you can smuggle plenty of physics and chemistry into it!
Readers may be interested to have a look at my 2012 NZCPR Guest Forum article "Making schooling work for all (even those problem teenage boys)".
What do you expect from an education system that indoctrinates students with Maori mumbo jumbo ?
Of course they are going to rank poorly against kids that are taught in English without the obligatory personal ideology of most of their teachers.
When did our rankings start dropping ?
At the same time as the Maori program was forced down the throats of every kid irrespective of their race.
And that is why the private schools do so much better.
The lower achievement of boys began , from my studies , with the introduction of 'look and say ''whole word reading method and this was when explicit ,systematic , early cumulative teaching of phonics was dropped from the 1950s onward in NZ . In the 1980s onward boys featured more in the Whole Language Reading Recovery programme , and since this programme was an abysmal failure not just because it failed to remediate students but also made them resistant to further learning. ! Hence we have now, a large number of semi -literate boys resistant to learning with a disproportionate number of them being Maori because lower decile students also have the greatest need not only for structured phonics but also discipline and high knowledge content - traditional , behaviourist teaching methods backed by cognitive science.
In the low decile Clackmammanshire Scottish research project boys achieved as well as girls in reading AND outperformed those in high decile shires. This was a 7 year longitudinal study and these improvements lasted into tertiary education.
I had a dyslexic son , with a flair for motor mechanics . He took his car apart and re assembled it when he was 15 years old . however , because of my mother's expertise in remedial reading , after her instruction he manifest no dyslexic symptoms. passed bursary English with a B grade and completed a Computer Science degree. Its all about giving children the choice of career. Nothing at all wrong with being a motor mechanic .
I could guarantee many of those students you mention Barend,, unmotivated and disinterested would be different if they had been taught using effective elementary teaching methods and could probably even achieve at a tertiary level. But learning higher level STEM subjects requires years of acquiring a solid foundation in the basics. It is probably too late by secondary , if you missed out on the earlier years.
So many educational studies from my perspective are based during the time when we have had infernal progressive teaching methods which because they produce wholesale failures show anomalous results on what students can actually achieve .Australia has only adopted Intensive phonics in the last 4years . I have a nephew there. Gaynor
A lot of academics fail to realize that most of the trades these days need good academic knowledge, especially maths and science. I remember in the 1960's and 70's you only needed three years secondary education (not even School Cert) to become an electrical apprentice. Not in today's world. The technology has advanced so much. An engineering degree is highly sought after, whereas a degree in the 'arts' is useless for most cases except teaching
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