Source: Radio New Zealand
The government announced a number of new secondary school subjects were coming earlier this year. RNZ
Sending teenagers to polytech for the day will be a central part of the government’s secondary school overhaul.
Education Minister Erica Stanford told the Vocational Education and Training Research Forum in Wellington the Trades Academy system was her “north Star” as the government developed industry-driven “vocational subjects” for secondary schools.
Trades academies are tertiary providers, often polytechnics, that take secondary school students for the day.
Stanford said she was evaluating the various vocational or trade training programmes offered by schools, but trades academies would certainly continue under the new system.
“There’s a range of different pathways. There’s so many of them. So we’re looking at the moment what does each one serve. What are the outcomes for each one. Which ones can we can we keep and retain. But trades academies is essentially what we are trying to to continue and build out because they’re massively successful,” she said.
“Trades Academy is is our North star. That’s what we’re trying to achieve.”
Education Minister Erica Stanford. (File photo) RNZ / Mark Papalii
Stanford agreed it was important to give students a taste of different options and subjects before they made subject choices in the senior secondary school.
She said the government wanted vocational subjects to be valued as highly as academic subjects.
Aotearoa Foundation Skills and Pathways Association co-chairperson Karen Dobric said the new vocational subjects needed to be set at a level of difficulty that would not shut students out.
“We’re looking at a a situation now where students on the whole, many students, can access unit standards-based subjects, but in the future what we’re looking at is industry-led subjects that will be at a higher level of difficulty.
“We need staircasing that’s going to prepare students for those subjects, but also have alternatives if students can’t actually manage to achieve those subjects, so that all students can remain in secondary school.”
Piet van der Klundert from training provider The Learning Place said the shift to vocational subjects would require a massive increase in resources to ensure students in every school including those in remote areas, teen parent units and Te Kura the correspondence school, could access them.
“We’re going from a really small cohort of learners that are engaged in vocational education currently to potentially opening this up to 150-plus-thousand students in year 12 and 13 across our secondary schools, so it is a massive undertaking, but a massive opportunity as well.
“We’re going to need more vocational education, focused teachers and providers delivering provision into their secondary schools, and we need the funding to be able to support it.”
Wellington College head of transition and careers Hamish Davidson said the new system should retain the flexibility that ensured students could try out a subject without being locked into it.
“One of the things that needs to be retained is the flexibility we currently have for students to explore and experiment before they commit to a long-term qualification or pathway within an area and so some of our existing programmes, like the Gateway programmes, give students that opportunity to try before you buy if you like.”
Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation director Greg Durkin said it had a long history of developing programmes for use in schools and the government’s reforms would make it easier for other industries to do the same.
He said vocational subjects needed parity of esteem with academic subjects.
Durkin said the curriculum needed to give students the basic skills and knowledge they needed to go on to study any trade or qualifiation.
Craig Dyason from the Careers and Transitions Education Association said students would need to be able to mix academic and vocational subjects so they were not trapped in one track or the other.
He said schools loved Trades Academies, which essentially allowed students to be polytechnic students for a day, and would be happy to hear the minister’s endorsement of them.
But he said schools should also retain Gateway, a programme that helped them provide work experience for students and worked well in tandem with Trades Academies.
“It’s that work experience, that exposure to those vocational pathways, which is super important so both programmes in schools we feel are vital for any student,” he said.
Technology Education NZ chairperson Hamish Johnston said Trades Academies worked well, but not all schools used them.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
