Vocational Education as an Alternative to University

The Grattan Institute has released a report which suggests vocational education and training (VET), as an alternative to university, for  students with low school results. Research by Norton, Cherastidtham, and Mackey (2019), suggest that, for those with a low low-ATAR, VET produces higher lifetime incomes than university, particularly for males.

The authors views on female education perhaps may be more controversial. They point out that engineering occupations are male-dominated. They then seem to suggest that women would be better off sticking to traditional female occupations of  teaching and nursing. In terms of public policy, I suggest we need to be changing this situation and not reinforcing existing discrimination through education policy.

Reference

Norton, A., Cherastidtham, I., and Mackey, W. (2019).
Risks and rewards: when is vocational education a good alternative to higher education?. Grattan Institute.

Training teachers for engaging students

The Grattan Institute. have released the report "Engaging students: creating classrooms that improve learning" (Pete Goss and Julie Sonnemann, February 2017). The headline finding from the report is that for Australian school students "... as many as 40 per cent are unproductive in a given year ... nearly one in four students are compliant but quietly disengaged." (Page 3). The authors go on to recommend strengthening university training for teachers, induction programs and regular feedback. Those are useful and uncontroversial suggestions, but the authors do not explain how these are to be achieved without increasing the length of teacher training, or the cost of it.


– engage their classes, such as student response cards
– identify triggers for student disengagement so they can adapt
and improve their approaches.


More controversially, the authors recommend government only accredit initial teacher education courses which "teach evidence-based techniques for engaging and managing students, and whose graduates can demonstrate that they can apply these approaches in practice" (Page 4). I don't think anyone is going to argues with evidence based teaching, until it comes to specifics as to which evidence supports which teaching methods.

What I find worrying about this report is its last-century approach to education. As an example, it is proposed teachers use response cards: "The teacher asks a question of the class. Each student writes their answer and holds it up. The teacher can then scan the room to see who is following and who may need help.". What we instead need to do is "flip" the class: this sort of basic feedback can be handled using a learning management system, which asks students questions, provides intimidate feedback to the student and a report to the teacher.  The class group time can be used to explore the aspects of the topic causing problems for students.


The authors als recommend "tools at scale that help teachers assess and improve engagement". But there is no mention as to what these tools might be, or how to teach students to use them. I suggest we need to introduce our teachers to blended learning during their basic education, as the primary tool they will be using. In-service teachers then need on-line support, through support groups, formal supervision and formal post-graduate on-line studies. All this is affordable, from the savings in the current antiquated education system.

Australian Virtual Schooling

Grattan Institute's report , "Turning around schools: it can be done", suggests schools can learning from each other and teachers observe each other's classrooms. This is not new or radical, it is a standard part of what teachers do. I suggest we need some more radical measures to improve Australia education, which can come from the existing practices of one sector of Australian education: Distance Education.

The NT and Queensland education departments have centres which support remote students. This is not so radical as it is a modern Internet version of the School of the Air. However, in addition to supporting individual distance education students at home, they also supports teachers in Community Schools in remote areas and students in larger regional schools which can't have a teacher for each specialist subject. The centres provide online materials and remote teaching to support to the local classroom teachers. This blended mode of education provides the student with a local teacher and a class, plus remote specialist support. I suggest this approach could be applied more generally, to support both the students and the teachers. We should get away from the idea of an isolated classroom with one teacher.

Kapitzke and  Pendergast (2005) report positively on the early trials of the Queensland Education Department's Virtual Schooling Service, which provides both distance education to students in the home and support for students in the classroom in remote schools. While they argue that new pedagogy is needed, there does not appear to have been a development of this, with the Virtual Schooling continuing to be run as first envisaged.

Australia’s Northern Territory Open Education Centre (NTOEC, 2014) provides distance education to students at home. NTOEC also supports teachers in Community Schools in remote areas. This mode of education provides the student with a local teacher and a class for cultural awareness and group activities, as well as remote teaching for specialist subjects.

Reference

Kapitzke, C., & Pendergast, D. (2005). Virtual Schooling Service: Productive Pedagogies or Pedagogical Possibilities?. Teachers College Record, 107(8), 1626-1651.Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/8153/1/8153_2.pdf

NTOEC, (2014). 2014 Subject and Enrolment Handbook. Darwin, Northern Territory: Northern Territory Open Education Centre. Retrieved from http://www.ntoec.nt.edu.au/site/attachments/Curriculum/subjecthandbook.pdf#page=3