Drop out and get a trade: PM

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dana quelle langue faut il vous le dire? (The Australian today)

Drop out and get a trade: PM
Elizabeth Colman and Ebru Yaman
March 07, 2005

JOHN Howard has urged young people to consider quitting school in Year 10 to pursue careers in traditional trades as the nation faces a growing shortage of skilled workers.

Sixteen years after the Hawke government promised Australia would become the "Clever Country", the Prime Minister said the nation had developed a "deep-seated" cultural stigma against technical vocations.

Mr Howard said yesterday that school leavers who learnt a trade often ended up much better off than if they had continued on with a university education.

"We went through a generation where parents discouraged their children from trades, and they said to them 'the only way you'll get ahead in life is to stay at school until Year 12 then go to university'," Mr Howard told the Seven Network.

"High Year 12 retention rates became the goal, instead of us as a nation recognising there are some people who should not go to university. What (these people) should do is at Year 10 decide they're going to be a tradesman.

"They'll be just as well off and, in my experience and observation, greatly better off than many others."

Mr Howard's comments come as a new government report, Skills at Work, to be released today and obtained by The Australian, reveals that most of the growth in apprenticeships is in areas where there are no skills shortages.

The Howard Government plans to address skills shortages by boosting skilled migration by 20,000 places, while business and industry has called for more investment in vocational education.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said yesterday that skilled migration was "obviously a shorter-term solution . . . because training does take time".

"My view is immigration should be there to help. If you need specialists for a limited period of time, we have to have the visa capacity for you to get that," she said.

One of the nation's largest employers, Woolworths chief Roger Corbett, added his voice to the chorus of concern about the emerging skills crisis. He expressed concern that it was getting harder to fill jobs in some sectors with Australia nearing full employment.

But the Opposition and unions accused the Government and business of squandering good economic times, and failing to invest in technical training.

Writing in The Australian today, Opposition Leader Kim Beazley says Australia has a ready workforce that is being "under-utilised".

"There are 570,000 under-employed people working a few hours per week, but wanting more. More than half, 58 per cent of these people, want a full-time job but they can't get one – often because they don't have access to the training that could lift their skills," Mr Beazley writes.

Yesterday, he attacked Mr Howard's plan to establish 24 new technical colleges and called for an "emergency contribution" to training.

"The TAFEs are crying out for money," he said. "Two hundred and seventy thousand people applied for entry into TAFEs and couldn't get it because of chronic commonwealth underfunding of TAFEs."

Australian Workers Union secretary Bill Shorten said unions had been warning business and the federal Government "for years" that their failure to invest in training would lead to skills shortages.

"There needs to be concerted work done by the Government, and by the private sector, to create incentives for private employers to do more training," Mr Shorten said.

Chief executive of the peak university lobby group, the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee, John Mullarvey, said it was clear the federal Government was shifting its focus to vocational training.

"In the last (Howard) government there was a focus on funding for universities. That focus is now on vocational education and training but that doesn't mean there won't be opportunities for universities."

Mr Mullarvey said it was in the nation's broader interests to have as many education and training opportunities on offer as possible.

"We have never argued that everyone should go to university," he said. "Each year there's unmet demand of about 20,000 to 25,000 – people who are qualified to but don't get into uni. If these people aren't lost to the system but are redirected elsewhere then that is a good thing."

Australian Bureau of Statistics data has previously shown bachelor degree holders earn more than TAFE graduates in skilled vocations, and have higher employment rates.

University graduates also spend less time looking for work than their technical college counterparts.

Australian Education Union federal president Pat Byrne said Mr Howard had "old-fashioned" views on TAFE and university.

"It's a real 1960s view of what schools used to do – the bright kids went on to university and the not-so-bright ones went on to technical careers," she said.

The Skills at Work report on the Government's New Apprenticeships scheme shows 93,830 clerical, sales and service apprenticeships were commenced after the scheme was introduced in 1996 – compared with 52,840 in trades.

The figures also show a slight drop in trade apprenticeships overall since 2000.

Business yesterday had reservations about any policy change that would limit future options for high school children.

"I think there is something in what John Howard says but we shouldn't give up on giving kids a diversity of options," Australian Industry Group chief executive Heather Ridout said.

"I think the Government has relied on the economy turning over on well-oiled wheels and we haven't really been taking a strategic approach to training."