ALA

Transcript

Interview with Alan Jones

26 July 2007

Alan Jones: Well, I said it must be a fortnight ago now, a little over a week ago, that this was one of Australia’s best kept secrets.

I had a tremendous reaction when I spoke to a lady called Sandra Langford. She’s the head teacher, do you remember, at the Australian Technical College? And I spoke to her after I received a letter from a listener whose son attends the college, where he’s studying carpentry. And my listener wrote, they attend Years 11 and 12, and in that time they do business studies, science, English and maths, for term one and part of term two, they then spend the rest of term two with a builder, and attend tech, in third term they come back to school for more study, and return to work in term four.

The father said they’re paid for their blocks of work, and at the end of two years they receive their HSC and have completed the first year of their apprenticeship, and the Master Builders guarantee to place them with a builder to finish their apprenticeship, and continue to oversee their training, to make sure they get plenty of experience. And the parent said, “I think this is a brilliant initiative, but it hasn’t had a lot of publicity”.

Well that was why I spoke to Sandra Langford, who’s the head teacher at the Australian Technical College. Well, at the time when I spoke to Sandra, I made the point to her that she was operating out of Rouse Hill Anglican College, and that was because they were going to acquire their own premises, and I set it’s time later this year.

Well, today the Australian Technical College gets those premises. Andrew Robb, the Federal Vocational Education Minister, will be announcing a new, permanent home for it, so they’ve been operating out at Rouse Hill, they’re only announcing the home, the Anglican College, the Rouse Hill Anglican College has basically hosted the technical college and its 20-odd students.

Come next year all that will change, and the Australian Technical College will have its own home near Blacktown, it’ll host 300 students in Years 11 and 12, and then in 2009, another, with 300 students, is scheduled to open at Penrith.

This is a brilliant idea, the open line went red hot when I raised it last time. I’m glad to be talking to the Minister, Andrew Robb, good morning.

ANDREW ROBB: Good morning, Alan.

ALAN JONES: This is the world’s best kept secret.

ANDREW ROBB: Yes, well you know, we promised, John Howard, his idea really, the last election, you might recall, he promised 25 what we call Australian Technical Colleges, they’re really reintroducing, if you like, the technical high schools, you know, that were around, a very common feature of the landscape 20 or 30 years ago.

I think one of our biggest mistakes as a community was closing these dedicated technical high schools. And we’ve now got 21 open, including one at Port Hedland this week, with a lot of indigenous young people, which is great news.

ALAN JONES: Yes, I mean the concept is outstanding, isn’t it? So you’re trying to tackle the skills crisis, but allowing students to begin an apprenticeship while completing Years 11 and 12, and they go in hand in hand.

ANDREW ROBB: Well that’s the idea, so that, you know, it’s a very deliberate attempt to lift the status and the quality and the esteem of technical education, because you know what it’s like, at a lot of schools now, there’s been - they might even introduce young people to some technical subjects and things, but overwhelmingly the whole focus is on the academics.

ALAN JONES: Yes, it’s a bit of an after thought.

ANDREW ROBB: It’s an after thought, and not only that, it’s sort of almost - if you’ve got strong technical skills, you’re seen as having a second-class career. We’ve talked down the trades for 20 or 30 years, and if you go to Germany, Alan, a master artist and a master tradesman.

ALAN JONES: Esteemed.

ANDREW ROBB: They’ve got the status of a judge.

ALAN JONES: Absolutely.

ANDREW ROBB: We’ve got to get back to the situation where we do see a high quality technical education and qualification as prized as, as valued as a university education, because, you know, the contribution that’s being made out there now by the trades, and people with strong technical skills, are highly sophisticated now, the trades.

ALAN JONES: Absolutely. So you’re going to have 28 of these, you put them out to tender, do you?

ANDREW ROBB: We put them out to tender.

ALAN JONES: How does that happen?

ANDREW ROBB: Well, we put out and ask for an expression of interest, and we ask for all of those in a particular local area, where there’s a large number of young people, where there’s a strong industry base, where there’s lots of opportunity to not only train, but to place them into industry once they’ve concluded their - or once they’re well into their apprenticeship.

And we put it out to tender, and local communities, this is the great strength of this, local industry, local communities, often local councils, local schools, sometimes TAFE, we’re getting consortia come to us and say, we will create an independent - they’re independent high schools, really, that’s what we’re creating, technical schools. And they come to us and say, this is how we can deliver something that is heavily related to local industry, and deliver their needs.

ALAN JONES: And in relation to this one, the Australian Technical College, which you’re now going to relocate, I mean the tender was won by the Master Plumbers’ Association, the Master Builders, and the Auto and Electrical Trades Association won the tender.

ANDREW ROBB: That’s right, that’s right.

ALAN JONES: And they set up the board at the college, and they got representatives from all those bodies on the board.

ANDREW ROBB: This is the great strength, Alan, we’ve got everyone of these schools around Australia, has got a board, and it must have a majority of industry people on it, chaired by someone from industry, so that the young people who start in Year 11, they go into a school-based apprenticeship, as well as continue on and do their Year 12 Certificate.

ALAN JONES: So they’re doing English, science, business studies and maths

ANDREW ROBB: That’s right.

ALAN JONES: And that’s balanced against the blocks of time where they’re then paid to be with a trades employer in the area?

ANDREW ROBB: In the area. They start their apprenticeship in Year 11, and the beauty of these colleges, they’ve got the flexibility, because they are dedicated technical schools, they’re not academic schools, if the local industry says, we would like their apprentices to have a block of five weeks, not just a day a week, because often that can be quite disruptive, it’s not all that helpful, we want a five week block. So the school can arrange the curricula and the programming so they give the young people their five week block, then they come back for five or six weeks, do their maths and English and trade scholarships - trade subjects and their business studies

ALAN JONES: And they finish up with an HSC at the end of it, and they’ve got a one-year apprenticeship.

ANDREW ROBB: They’re well ahead of a lot of their peers, they’ve got their Year 12 certificate, and they’re a third of the way through their apprenticeship, they’ve had two years of involvement with the workplace, and more importantly, I think, Alan, this is a critical thing, they are in an environment which is celebrating what they’re good at, which is saying to these young people you’ve been born with some wonderful technical talents, we’re going to develop these talents, we’re going to focus on you, you are important, we’re going to make the most of your skills from an early age, we’re going to celebrate you, and we’re going to set you one a strong career course.

ALAN JONES: I don’t know about you, but I mean I can’t even hammer a nail, and you know, I envy those people, they can build a chest of drawers, or their own table, they can build their own house, they have wonderful skills, we don’t celebrate them enough.

ANDREW ROBB: No, we don’t, and in fact we’ve done the reverse, we’ve made a lot of parents feel that they’re failures if their kids don’t go off to university. Now the fact of the matter is, in this modern economy we’ve got now, we need about 20 per cent with a university qualification in the workplace.

We’ve pretty much got that, that’s in balance, but they estimate we need 60 per cent of the workforce with a strong technical qualification. Currently we’ve got 30 per cent, and I think it’s because we’ve talked down the trades for so long, people have been discouraged from doing it, plus we don’t give them a start early enough at secondary school, we wait until they’ve finished secondary school, and they stumble off and try and find something in the TAFE or whatever.

But we should be identifying them early, celebrating the talents these young people have been born with, but also focusing the whole curricula - you see, with this English and maths, Alan, what’s happening is that in these schools, they’re taking examples out of the trades that these young people are doing, and they’re building that into the maths curricula, so the maths assumes a lot more relevance to–

ALAN JONES: It’s as relevant to the location.

ANDREW ROBB: Absolutely, but they’re still getting a Year 12 qualification, a Year 12 level of maths, but it’s a lot more relevant to them, because it grows out of the trade that they’re working on.

ALAN JONES: So you’re announcing a new permanent home for the Australian Technical College, which has currently been operating out of Rouse Hill Anglican College

ANDREW ROBB: Absolutely, it’ll be on the Defence Base, Alan.

ALAN JONES: At Blacktown, yes, near Blacktown, and then another one is going to open up, what, in 2009, at Penrith?

ANDREW ROBB: At Penrith.

ALAN JONES: And you’ve got 28 of these across the country?

ANDREW ROBB: We’ve got 28, there’s over 300 - by 2009 we’ll have nearly 10,000 young people across the country, with an opportunity to go into one of these technical high schools.

ALAN JONES: I think it’s a fantastic idea, it’s the world’s best kept secret. Good to talk to you.

ANDREW ROBB: Thanks for the opportunity.

ALAN JONES: Not at all. Andrew Robb, how good’s that? I think it’s wonderful, and it’s reorienting the balance, which is very important, isn’t it?