Source: Radio New Zealand
Some studies suggest that the retirement-age pay gap between vocational training and university graduates has closed, but New Zealand still holds the academic path in higher esteem. RNZ / Robin Martin
University entrance has long been the gold standard result from our schools – but there’s hope that planned changes will improve life for those who want to tread a different path
Just three of every 10 school leavers head to universities, those halls of learning long considered to be the gold standard of education.
But a tradie can earn as much as a policy analyst – and a plumber’s job can’t be done by artificial intelligence. Some studies suggest that the retirement-age pay gap between both paths has closed.
There’s also no rule to say you can’t do both, and having a construction career under your belt is a good way to go into an engineering degree, for example.
Today on The Detail we talk to two experts in the area of education pathways – both welcome the shifting of government funding from fees-free university tuition to vocational education and trades training.
Josh Williams is the principal consultant for the Skills Development Group, and former head of the Industry Training Federation. He’s also been a senior policy manager at the Ministry of Education and has been involved in managing school transition programmes such as Youth Guarantee and Gateway.
Skills Development has issued a White Paper called Multiple Pathways to Success which discusses this issue.
Williams says we need to make it really clear what the alternative pathways from school to work are.
“Because at the moment we’re pigeon-holing people into ‘it’s university, or not university’.
“Well, what’s in the ‘not’?” he says.
“Getting university entrance can’t be the only goal of 13 years at school.
“We have to prepare our young people for a wider range of opportunities, and in particular that exposure and experience which means they’ll be able to make that successful step and find their pathway.”
One block when it comes to this is called ‘parity of esteem’ – where non-university pathways aren’t seen as prestigious, and the qualifications levels aren’t equitable.
“Although even the phrase ‘parity of esteem’ pretends like there’s two things, there’s academic and there’s vocational. I kind of reject that and honestly where the situation’s going now where we’re talking about a shared curriculum that has industry subjects and curriculum subjects sitting within a shared curriculum I think is very positive.
“Look, every young person is on a trip to the workforce.”
Williams says the whole idea behind NCEA was that it could recognise and reward learning from a much wider range of things.
“Effectively any credit on the framework could count towards your NCEA. That flexibility was absolutely seen as a strength, but that flexibility was also ultimately a bit of a weakness, because the assessment system that came in under NCEA has effectively been grafted on to a schooling system that hasn’t changed very much.
“The main game is to chase a thing called University Entrance because it’s really the only clear recipe in the whole cookbook of school. Everything else is a bit of an add-on.
“Certainly it was the case that the flexibility of NCEA could be misused, that ultimately kids could come out with an NCEA qualification that was made up of an incoherent grab-bag of things that didn’t really add up to a purposeful direction or a set of foundation skills for employability.”
Williams says there are a range of schemes that exist that do work, such as Gateway, but at the moment only about 15 percent of our Year 11 to 13 population access them.
It’s hoped that a change in the curriculum will help build better connections between schools and the workplace.
Dr Michael Johnston, a Senior Fellow from the think-tank New Zealand Initiative, has written a report called Working Knowledge – Designing Industry-Led Subjects for Students and Schools.
He chaired a 2024 Ministerial Advisory Group for the Education Minister on the development of a knowledge-rich curriculum for English and mathematics. He’s now a member of the Curriculum Coherence group, which advises on the development of knowledge-rich curricula across all school subjects.
He’s been in Germany studying their system and tells The Detail today what he does – and doesn’t – like about it, and what we could adopt.
Johnston says in New Zealand there’s never been a formal national curricula for vocational education at secondary school.
“We’ve had technology for a long time, but not subjects that are so completely geared towards getting young people into apprenticeships and tertiary training, where these subjects will be very responsive to the needs of industry. This is the first time were we would have had formal curricula for that kind of subject.”
Johnston also questions the qualifications framework and the parity between them.
“We see Bachelor’s degrees at Level 7, and most trades qualifications at Level 4. Why is that? Do we really think that to be a skilled electrician is trivial compared with getting a Bachelor of Arts?”
Asked what makes him think we have an opportunity now to change things, Johnston says he’s “an eternal optimist”.
“It comes down ultimately to a cultural prejudice, and I think that is borne of a time when, first of all, I would say university education was of higher quality, and when far fewer people went to university, so it had this elite status.
“And to be fair in those days it probably did lead to the higher incomes on average. But I think those days are gone.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand