Caption: “Go home to your real family, VET!
You’re adopted!”. This is me at the front of the Federal Department of
Industry. The VET sector in Australia gets moved around government departments
every few years, and this causes headaches as policies and governments change.
The VET sector used to fall under the Department of Education, Employment and
Workplace Relations, then the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science,
Research and Tertiary Education, then the Department of Industry, and now to
the Department of Education and Training.
It is frustrating for us practitioners because
the policy focuses always change and there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of
stability. We have been awaiting major changes to the course that I teach for
the last two years, and now they have sent part of the course back to the
drawing board for further consultation with the industry. My learners come into
the course very confused about the changes, as they hear rumours, and they
wonder whether the course is going to change soon and make their qualification
redundant!
It sounds a bit chaotic (and at times it is) and
reminds me a lot of Schön’s quote about the high, hard ground of professional
practice vs. the swampy lowlands of reality!
Hi James! This is true also for the adult VET sector i Sweden, but I know from my exchange projects with Australia that you have a very many policy changes. The situation for the VET sector is Sweden for youths is that there are three-year programs. Here is the descpription in English of onehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3Zp_ouuDV6WTHo2LXkwQlhlRVE/edit
ReplyDeleteIn 2011 there was a reform that implied that students who want to carry on to higher education need to take extra courses in order to be eligible. The consequence has been a great drop of students in the upper secondary VET programs, as the (and their parents) choose higher education preparatory programs, to keep the door open...
Hi James! This is true also for the adult VET sector i Sweden, but I know from my exchange projects with Australia that you have a very many policy changes. The situation for the VET sector is Sweden for youths is that there are three-year programs. Here is the descpription in English of onehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3Zp_ouuDV6WTHo2LXkwQlhlRVE/edit
ReplyDeleteIn 2011 there was a reform that implied that students who want to carry on to higher education need to take extra courses in order to be eligible. The consequence has been a great drop of students in the upper secondary VET programs, as the (and their parents) choose higher education preparatory programs, to keep the door open...
Hi Ingrid, It seems the same the world over! Thanks for sending that link though. I am actually open to the idea of coming over to teach in the VET sector in Sweden one day! I'm interested to know what qualifications that VET teachers in Sweden need, maybe you can tell me more or send a relevant link?
DeleteThe reform in Sweden seems to have some unintended consequences, which is not good!
Similarly in Australia we had a policy come in a few years ago (2009) requiring young people to stay in school until they were 17 unless they had a full time job or were studying a VET course. Since then, many schools have also established stronger VET programs including government-funded trade training centres or "School-Based Apprenticeships and Traineeships". These encourage students to remain in school with a combination of academic and vocational training programs. My cousin, for example, studied IT in her last two years of school. If we study a vocational training course as part of our last two years of school, we can still be eligible to get a university admission rank.
The Swedish system sounds a bit similar to the German system. I did a uni exchange in Bavaria for my Bachelor and remember how rigid the schooling system was.
I like learning about different education systems and bureaucracies!
Hej James!
ReplyDeleteInteresting that you did an exchange with Bavaria! In what respect do you think, the German system is too rigid?
In some sense I agree with you about the kind of not being flexible in different educational systems (I am German myself, but work in Finland). On the other hand I think educational systems should not be too flexible towards every movement that there is in society or on the market. Otherwise no-one knows what to expect and what to count on, neither students who aim for an education in a certain field/vocation nor teachers or employees. But I guess you would agree in this?
Anyway, thank you for your interesting posts and thoughts!
Birgit