Principal's Report

It is  National Skills Week this week. Skills are becoming increasingly important and increasingly in demand. I am often asked why, as a senior secondary College, we have made a concerted effort to diversify our curriculum offerings so as to offer both senior secondary certificates (VCE and VCAL) as well as more than 40 Vocational Education and Training qualifications.  The answer is simple; VET is well placed to support the needs of the future economy.

Recent research shows that only 24% of people think VET courses are focused on jobs of the future...

But with a direct connection to industry, geographically accessible and often more affordable, VET institutions are uniquely positioned to prepare current and future workers for a changing economy – and to keep up with the changing demands of employers.

Far from preparing students for low-skilled, low-paid or low-future work, VET produces skilled graduates with hands-on work experience under their belt. These graduates often go on to jobs with employment opportunities and remuneration on a par with those of university grads.

‘The Australian workplace is continuing to change and so too are employer expectations of school graduates.’ 

In Australia, employers are demanding transferable enterprise skills from graduates across organisations. Skills like communication, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, analysis, oracy and presentation skills are expected and will lead to employment.

Employers value such skills and are willing to pay a premium for young job seekers who have them, that is the National data indicates that employers will now pay more to recruit those young people who can demonstrate competency across the range of these highly sought after skillsets. The National data also reveals that undertaking courses which enhance and embed these skills can increase the speed to full-time work by up to 17 months for young people.

Foundational, and technical or job specific skills will still be important in the future, some trades will be increasingly in demand, while others may well be replaced by smarter machines. What will be required are those ‘soft’ people skills that can not be taught in a classroom or via a textbook. These are the skills that are developed on the job, engaging with others in real situations where these are required to achieve the task at hand. The ability to be aware of others’ views, others’ reactions and to have the empathy to understand why others respond in certain ways, will become a highly valued and necessary skill for our students when they are full time employees in the future.

The current generation of young people are responding more positively to opportunities where they can apply their learning immediately in a hands-on manner. Students  also require practical application of their skills, not only to learn and regurgitate subject matter, but to have the ability to apply their skills and knowledge in varying situations.

Locally and  globally, a gap already exists between the demand and supply of people with the required skills. A recent report ‘The New Work Reality’ showed that 75% of young people believe that a key reason they can’t get full-time work is because they don’t have the skills employers are looking for or the know-how to put them into practice in the work environment. More than 50% of young Australians aged 25 struggle to secure full-time work despite being better educated than ever before. A quarter of entry-level employers report having difficulty filling vacancies because applicants lack employability skills.

Education is changing and will continue to change. We are seeing a shift away from scored assessment as the stand alone measure of students, and it is long overdue I might add. Students are more than an ATAR score. The ATAR score is important for those students who wish to undertake tertiary studies, the universities require the score in order to determine who is eligible for their various courses and who is not. However, young people will be assessed not merely on their qualifications when they finish studying and commence work. There is every chance that given the industry demands of young workers is changing at a rapid rate that when the Class of 2018 finishes their tertiary studies there will be an a new approach which is emerging now.

The beauty of the model of VET training that we developed at CRC Sydenham which we coined Enterprise Education (learning in a real business in the College) is exactly what we will start to see emerging as the new model moving forward. Learning systems need employers to engage as co-designers of real world learning to ensure graduates are able to make a faster, smoother transition from education to work. The latest report suggests that the greatest challenge now is that our policymakers need to consider better integrating work and immersive, real world learning throughout all of education.

The article goes on to ask ‘But while we push for these changes, where do young people get access to opportunities to learn by doing?’ The answer is something we have understood for 8 years now when we first opened the TTC and the associated businesses in the centre.

The focus for education is moving towards vocational education and training (VET) as it is the qualifications and the training students undertake that offers a real opportunity to help them get future-fit.  National reports and reviews still sadly suggest that on our kindest of days, most Australians believe that VET is ‘stuck in the past’. Recent research shows that only 24% of people think VET courses are focused on jobs of the future. Four in five parents would prefer their children go to university after leaving school rather than undertake a vocational training pathway. This is not the case at Catholic Regional College Sydenham though, as our community has grown to value and understand VET having seen the transformation in student engagement over the years. Families in our community understand that the model of VET education we offer can enhance the VCE and VCAL courses and often mean students understand the reason they are at school, less likely to become disenfranchised. 

The new reality of work is here to stay. We can’t press pause on change, or halt the increasing demands on our young people. But we can set them up for success with a ‘real world’ model of learning that brings education and work together. Our students, in my mind, are the best and so deserve the best. Why do we offer such a broad curriculum – we do it so that they may have life and live it to the full as Jesus said.

Brendan J Watson

Principal