Federal report calls for action on VET in Schools workload

By Wendy Currie

A Commonwealth Committee report has recommended that state governments address the thorny issue of the workload of vocational education and training (VET) teachers in schools.

The report, Learning to Work, by the Commonwealth House of Representatives Committee on Education and Training's Inquiry into vocational education in schools lists among its 41 recommendations:

• "that state and territory education authorities recognise in their staffing formulae the additional workload of teachers with significant VET responsibilities, and reduce the classroom teaching load to reflect the extra work, supervision and reporting requirements of teaching VET"; and
• "that as a priority more complete assessments be made of the costs of vocational education and specifically VET in Schools (using The Cost of VET in Schools, 2003 as a methodology) in comparison with:

  "general education programs in schools; and

  "the delivery of comparable certificate programs in TAFE;

  "and that such calculations demonstrate higher costs of VET in Schools programs than general education programs, Commonwealth, state and territory governments share the responsibility for funding, with states and territories raising the recurrent per capita funding and the Commonwealth increasing the capital and support funding."

Other recommendations cover the purpose and promotion of VET in schools, national consistency, school-based new apprenticeships, resourcing, professional development, the Australian Quality Training Framework, coordination and cooperation, recognition processes, workplace learning, generic and employability skills, industry needs, careers education, special needs, and outcomes.

In particular, the Committee, chaired by Kerry Bartlett MP, looked at the extent to which schools had managed to integrate VET within their mainstream organisational structures and identified barriers to this occurring. The report noted:

"The degree to which schools have incorporated the organisational and structural requirements for conducting VET in schools has been raised as a key to sustaining high quality VET in senior secondary school. Greater sustainability is dependant on greater mainstreaming of courses and parity of esteem for VET. Aspects of school operations and culture which need to be addressed in order to sustain VET include:

• "operational features such as timetabling and the length of the school day, how VET is delivered including purchasing where necessary from other providers, and transport to facilitate mobility of students;

• "perceived parity or lack thereof between general and vocational education;

• "equal treatment of alternative pathways in career education and student counselling, with advocacy of a wide range of training and employment options, beyond the traditional tertiary courses and related jobs; and

• "professional development for teachers, and the addressing of workload issues."

Wendy Currie is a Research Officer.

VET in Schools Special Interest Group

Many varied issues impact specifically on the work of VET in Schools teachers. In order to help develop strategies to deal with these, Federation is about to establish a Special Interest Group (SIG) for teachers, head teachers and co-ordinators of VET subjects. This SIG will predominantly operate online, giving teachers outside the Sydney metropolitan area the opportunity to participate.

If you are interested in being a member of this SIG, please fax details, including your name, email address, school and subjects taught, to Federation on fax number (02) 9217 2483 marked to the attention of Wendy Currie.

For further information

May 2004 contents