NEWS: Key flies the flag for trades in schools

4 Comments
18 June 2007
NEWS: Key flies the flag for trades in schools

National's Leader John Key has announced his Party's commitment to putting trades and industry training back into the heart of New Zealand's school system, during a speech to the Employers and Manufacturers Association.

"Two of New Zealand's biggest challenges are a lack of adequately skilled workers to meet employer demands, and the wasted potential of thousands of young New Zealanders who are alienated from education.

"We can get more Kiwi kids interested in school, and achieving more while they're there, if we offer them something practical and something which might lead to a job they can be passionate about.

"Trades and industry training has been sidelined in too many schools and cut off from too many students.

"National is committed to helping schools overcome the funding and bureaucratic barriers that prevent so many students from accessing trades and industry-based education at school.

"We want all students, in all secondary schools, in all areas, to be able to take part in hands-on learning in a range of industries.

Mr Key announced a number of steps National will take to promote trades and industry training in schools:

· Fix the technology curriculum by ensuring it contains references to the need for students to make things, build things, and produce things.

· Tackle the technology teacher crisis by working with teachers and industry to increase the pool of people able to take trades and technology classes.

· Encourage business and industry to help provide schools with resources for trades training.

· Give schools more flexibility to offer their students trades and industry training outside their school gates, whether at other schools, local training providers or at Industry Training Organisation (ITO) approved workplaces.

· Promote innovation in school-based delivery of trades and industry training by funding select schools to run "Trades Academies".

· Piloting a school-based apprenticeships scheme similar to the one run successfully in Australia.

Mr Key called on industry to work with National to achieve this goal and said he was open to their ideas and confident of their support.

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#1 - Andrew Atkin 2007-06-18 16:45 - (Reply)

I found it an encouraging speech Mr Key. The fact that today you have to pay something crazy like $500 for a plumber to install a dishwasher shows us how important these guys really are, and that we have a serious under-supply of them. One idea I will include is to use video-tutorials for practical workshops. Students can watch a DVD on practical work before they actually come to class to do the practicals themselves. These videos should be cheap to make. All you need is a digital camera and a couple of small spotlights (to get a good picture), and then record a professional doing his/her work. From there, with your raw material, you edit it all out on a PC and do the voice-overs to explain what's going on - no big 'studio event' required (not like TV where you have to turn it into an entertainment show, which is of course very expensive). In fact, nowadays, I think that's how most education should work. Students should watch the video-instruction at home or at school, and come to class (already 80 percent expert on what they're going to do) for the practicals - the responsive teacher can focus on debugging students problems as opposed to repeating the same old lectures. It should ultimately allow us to concentrate real learning at school by automating the automatable part of education. It can also dramatically increase flexibility because student's don't have to conform to the same lecture. I also agree it's a good idea to not worry to much about specific teacher training. Firstly because I don't believe that you can teach the natural skill of teaching, and secondly because I reckon teacher training may do more harm than good - teaching teachers to go by a book as opposed to their own natural understanding of communication? What on earth do they learn on those courses!?

#2 - Grant Philpott 2007-06-19 04:16 - (Reply)

I was a technology teacher until I was poisoned by the labour party using Foray 48b over West Auckland. I have spent the last few years trying to recover some health. This year I started doing postgraduate papers in technology education at the University of Auckland and I was absolutely appalled at the drive to make Technology an academic subject in schools. I was so disgusted I quit my studies. I have heard so many horror stories from ex students about poor technology education in schools. Equipment gathering dust in corners and teachers with no industry experience. In fact I believe that most technology teachers now have no industry experience. In my last teaching position I was told off for sitting down with my students brainstorming and participating in their projects. I was told that a technology teacher should stand at the front of the room , hand out materials and make sure no one hurt themselves. What happened to the apprenticeship model, whats the point of having industry and life experience when you can't share it with the students? Nearly all my adult friends are capable practicing technologists, yet all failed at school because they were dyslexic. They all left without academic qualifications. They can't teach their practical skills to students because teaching is an academic vocation now. This needs to change. We don't have an education system, we have an education industry devoted to providing jobs for academics. Students are just another consumable. Having worked with Intermediate age students, there is no reason(other than academic bureaucracy)why students cannot complete Unit Standards from Intermediate on so that by the age of 15 they are industry ready and prepared to be useful functioning members of the workforce.

#3 - Darel Hall said:
2007-06-19 09:43 - (Reply)

This was an encouraging speech. Thank you.

#4 - Adam Beach 2007-06-20 13:28 - (Reply)

I am glad to see that the national party is taking education seriously for all people, not just those who are planning to go to university. For too long has the schools system been driven too far towards producing academics at the detriment of our practical trades, the shortages and the extra cost involved in hiring the few trades people available is a clear indication of this. I know from my own experience that I learn t more about mathematics when using it practically during my electrical training than at my whole time at secondary school. This policy should discourage students from dropping out at a younger age, which often occurred at my secondary school due to a lack of options at senior level, as the pragmatic thing to do was to leave at 16 enroll at a tertiary provider and get a student loan, which as we know isn't the best outcome. and by increasing options for our young people while they are within free part of the education system it should reduce the amounts being borrowed by students under the loan scheme in the future.

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