Newsletter

In the spirit of Year 12 exams underway across the country, a small essay exercise follows. Read below and answer the questions that follow. In a faraway land not too long ago lived a happy and prosperous people. They had come from around the world over many years to settle and enjoy the land’s rich reward.

The streets of Richmond in the inner suburbs of Melbourne will be eerily quiet this week considering the significance of the event in Brisbane on Saturday evening.

Last week’s budget has thrown everything at economic recovery from the impact of the global pandemic. A push for jobs and faith in employers to open them up. In these unprecedented times every encouragement is being given to keep or take on workers.

They say if you saw what goes into a meat pie you’d never eat one again. Now that the National Skills Commissioner has been confirmed in his role he will have to prise open that soft soggy pastry to see what fills the VET qualification pie.

Proposed changes to credit arrangements in higher education are likely to go through with not so much as a whimper but they speak volumes of the state of tertiary education in Australia, let alone the attitude toward lifelong learning.

Dear Prime Minister, Our parents told us that earlier this year you said vocational education and training is just as good as university. We took you at your word. It hasn’t worked, so we’ll try university thanks, or make our own way in work.

There has been some commentary arising from TDA’s submission to the Productivity Commission about the centrality of technology transfer and TAFEs role in it. Surely the advancement of students is the mission, was the question? Walla – what comes first, skills or industry?

‘Forget whatever you learned in your teaching degree, it doesn’t work in the face of 25 marauding kids.’ For all the teachers out there I’m sure you heard that during your practicum. I did. It was an important part of immersion into a workplace. I resolved to apply my theories of teaching and class management once I had my own classroom.

I have a confession of failed fathering. My wife helped my son build his Lego models! I’m proud of my progress, though, when it comes to spreading the good word. I risk giving away my age as I tell this story but I hope it triggers memories for, … mmm,… well, those of you whom we’d regard as the more mature.

Once upon a time, in my younger days, I ran church summer camps for school children, teens and young adults. For those from the West it was the Baptist Campsite in Serpentine, which some of you might have visited for school camp.

The following is a copy of a column I wrote for the World Federation of Colleges and Polytechnics (WFCP) in its August Dispatch. TDA is a member of the federation which seeks to promote advancement in TVET. Two important reports, among many, were released this past month that tell a story – from two different angles – of the challenge for professional and technical education and training around the globe.

Last week I invoked the notion of TAFE institutional capacity as the bedrock of technology transfer – the economic objective of vocational education systems around the world – but sorely missing in the Australian narrative.

Authorities are investigating the disappearance of the toilet seats from the Central Police Station of New York. Police have nothing to go on (boom boom)! A weird warning for Australian VET. Let me explain, using universities as a reference point.

The first six months of semester one, 2020 has certainly been a memorable one for everyone. Almost overnight, COVID-19 transformed how we live, how we work, and how we learn. Consequently, we have all had to think differently about our operations and find new, more agile ways of working and delivering training.

Admittedly in this COVID environment it’s difficult to get clean air for government announcements, but I couldn’t resist linking the Prime Minister’s very good news of $1 billion for vocational education and training with the one the next day of $400 million for the Australian film industry.

AFL fanatics in Melbourne and Adelaide with a few years behind them will recall Waverly Park built on the old market gardens of Mulgrave and Football Park in West Lakes in Adelaide. They were wide expansive playing fields away from the city. Public transport was poor and sweeping cold winds chilled the spectators who, in the best of seating, felt distant from the action on the field.

Even though NAIDOC week (which was due to start yesterday) has been postponed till November we’ve decided to examine the role TAFEs play in lifting the life choices and chances for the descendants of the original inhabitants of our land.

The most apocryphal story of King Solomon comes from two women claiming motherhood of a boy child. Coming to the wise king for a judgement to overcome the stalemate Solomon commanded soldiers to cut the boy in half – one half for each. One consented but the other offered the child to the other to save his life. It was the latter to whom Solomon gave the child – the love for (her) child outweighed the property motive of the other (one can only assume the dispute was over earning capacity the boy would bring to the household at some