Making VET in Schools work: a review of policy and practice in the implementation of vocational education and training in Australian schools

Abstract

Pressure for schools to adopt a more vocationally oriented approach to the education of young people is by no means new, especially in times of economic dislocation. White has demonstrated considerable similarities in public policy responses to periods of youth unemployment in the 1890s, 1930s and 1990s (White 1995). In each case, demands for increasing vocational relevance were placed on education systems, at least until the peak of the crisis was perceived to have passed.

Australian education systems at the beginning of the twenty-first century are once more in a period in which great hope is placed on an expanded vocational dimension to school students' learning. Some of these initiatives are purely schoolbased and rely on school-oriented certification and recognition, such as the various State Higher School Certificates (HSC), School Certificates (SC) and Senior Certificates. Others attempt to utilise recognition arrangements under the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF), which is intended to apply to programs in the national vocational education and training (VET) sector, primarily oriented to vocational preparation of adults.

My work in this paper builds on recent research on the Australian and overseas experience of VET in Schools and Work Based Education. I argue that not all innovations under the VET in Schools rubric are equally valuable. I suggest that programs and policies which depart from the traditional educative role of schools in favour of an unduly narrow concept of ‘training’ or work-relevance are likely to be self-defeating; that work itself may be a rich source of student learning and development; and that VET in Schools initiatives too frequently represent an evasion of a pressing need for more deep-seated reform of schools and schooling.