Schools; Training for Work or Education for Being?
You should mind your own business and work with your hands… so your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody
1 Thessalonians 4:11-12
Dear Students, Parents and Carers
The social discourse on the purpose of schools like Shore over time goes through surges and lulls. For those who stay long in the system (like me) there is a circularity discernible in the manner in which the same arguments are mounted periodically as if they were novel.
Schools have always needed to serve the society which was their context. Often however, schools can be behind the wave in that they are fairly conservative institutions. In a bygone age, they served the industrial and manufacturing needs of the economy, graduating large numbers of students from Middle School (Year 9 or Year 10) to work in the factories of production and to undertake apprenticeships, with a view to future work in trades.
Now, manufacturing and agriculture have declined as proportions of our economy (although mining remains strong). We now live in the knowledge economy where intellectual capital is to the fore. Prophets of the future and industry spokespeople insist that the school graduates of the future will need to be agile, adaptive and able to pivot on the basis of their capabilities into new modes of work barely imagined, as artificial intelligence becomes common place.
In some ways then it may seem odd that some of our political masters and their business world associates still insist that the role of schools is to train students for their role as cogs in the economy, as distinct from educating them as creative and critical thinkers with the capacities to adjust to changing circumstances. Indeed, the debate about whether schools should continue to sit in the liberal humanist tradition of graduating educated people or whether they should be subservient to the immediate needs of commercial mandarins is a perpetual debate which never seems to come to full resolution. Some with long experience of this circularity will remember the series of, in effect, vocational enquires into education stretching back into the 1980s with the Mayer, Finn and Carmichael Reports. More recently, we have seen the Shergold Report, where Professor Shergold, Chair of NESA (NSW Education Standards Authority), has argued for a closer alignment of schools and vocational education.
From of these reports it is difficult to discern any great impact on school education. We have, it is true, seen the introduction of some vocational subjects as part of the HSC. These tend to be high cost (Hospitality, Construction courses) where teachers also need industry standard training for recognition by VETAB (Vocational Education Training and Admissions Board). To study such courses, students can miss part of the school day, with the problems that creates, to go off to TAFE to study such a subject as part of their HSC. Some of these subjects have not in the past carried capacity to be included in student ATARs, and students wanting an ATAR have only been allowed to include 1 of these ‘Category B’ subjects, which for some is a considerable handicap. As of this year, the categorisation of subjects as Category A or Category B has been lifted. Students can now study more units of vocational subjects, which can also count toward their ATARs. We have new possibilities.
I stand firmly in the position that education is fundamentally education for life and hence is best undertaken through the kind of academic subjects for which schools have been known for a long time (with recent additions, to serve a changing society). Additionally, I want schools to contribute to the holistic formation of young people who will be effective adults. This implies a mixture of knowledge, skills and attitudes. I resist the idea that the purpose of school is to train students for a particular job or career. That is the role of universities, (for instance, medicine or law), technical colleges or employers themselves.
An outcome of the Dawkins reforms (Federal Minister for Education) in the late 1980s was that many colleges became universities, encouraging some, better suited to vocational training, to pursue university, with mixed results.
However, I am not blind to the value and importance of trade training. Which of us has never struggled to find a tradie prepared to come to the project we need (urgently) completed? When they do come, they charge like the proverbial wounded bull! These are lucrative pathways.
There is Biblical mandate for undertaking productive work, rather than being idle. “You should mind your own business and work with your hands… so your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody” (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12). The emphasis in our terms is not so much on manual work but responsible living. Parents certainly want their children to have productive pathways, such that they will not remain dependent indefinitely on the family purse.
A study of what employers want (this information comes from the McCrindle Report) indicates that the core competencies in order of desirability are problem solving, critical thinking, communications skills and self management. The most valued character qualities, again in order, are persistence and initiative, adaptability and self-awareness. The pundits predict that most of the career areas in which our graduates will work within the next 15 years do not yet exist and can only be guessed at by projection from the present into the future. The McCrindle survey indicates that only 14% of current students in a wide sample group are expecting to work in areas of traditional employment. This alone demonstrates the folly of training them just for areas which may be irrelevant to their personal futures.
At Shore, our reality is that most of our students are aiming at university education. For this reason, a broad curriculum which gives them multiple options for the future as well as a base of knowledge and applicable skills, is desirable preparation. Shore does however, realise that some of our students will not be on this pathway. There is no suggestion that other pathways are less valid or lacking in esteem. From 2024, we are initiating a particular pathway, HSC Plus, which will essentially be by invitation for students who will seek access to future employment, training and/or university. We will therefore introduce Business Services, not to be confused with Business Studies. Business Services is a VET (Vocational Education and Training) course for which the Association of Independent Schools will be our Registered Training Organisation (RTO). It will be taught within the School timetable and on site by one of our Economics and Business Studies faculty who is equipped to teach in this mode. We will also offer, in Year 11, a Work Studies course designed to be taken in conjunction with Business Services. It needs to be stressed that students who pursue this pathway will be eligible for an HSC, ATAR and will also receive a Certificate III in Business Services, a recognised Australian qualification. This pathway provides both a traditional, heritage rich curriculum, coupled with vocational options suited to some of our students. As there is some overlap between Business Studies and Business Services, students are precluded from choosing both.
In fact, the pathways for all Shore students do not end here. As McCrindle points out, and those who work in schools observe, young people are increasingly committed to social issues and have an entrepreneurial mindset. They seek meaning and purpose in their work and are deeply interested in technology assisted modes, career mobility and work life balance. Gen Z students were found to be deeply committed to global issues, including, in order of importance, ending racism, reducing climate change, promoting social equality, alleviating poverty, embracing resource scarcity and promoting gender equality. Schools, through their curricular and co-curricular activity, need to give students a voice and pathways in terms of these deep concerns. Failing to do so risks being seen by students as offering an education which is irrelevant or circumscribed.
As Shore then, we seek to occupy what might be seen as the middle ground of honouring our great tradition in the classical mould but also embracing and nurturing that which is necessary to equip and prepare students for a world in flux. That environment will require of them the capacity and willingness to continue their learning throughout their lives and to thrive in a VUCA world; a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. This world, the future, is roaring towards us and we need to rush forward to embrace it and indeed help shape it for our students in ways which are most helpful.
Dr John Collier
Headmaster
