Guest posting to voced-coord email list. Item 4 of 9:

Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1998 15:00:00 +1100
To: voced-coord@owl.qut.edu.au
From: Richard_Laidlaw@astf.com.au
Subject: Re: What are you going to do when you grow up?

Thanks for your response Christine. A number of others have responded directly to me regarding career preparation and transition to work.

As you said - and can even put in bold print - we are doing quite well in Australia. I spent at least half of my meetings in most countries talking about what happens here and people were really interested (except in one certain country where the boy from the colonies was here to learn and had little to offer to them THANK YOU VERY MUCH)

One aspect that is quite envied is our system of national accreditation, creating portability of skills and credit transfer. In a country like the US where everyone seems to move every few weeks they all wanted vocational credit to be able to take them further than the state line.

The UK government admitted that one of the initiatives they are trying to get off the ground is modelled on the NETTFORCE efforts in Australia. The Swedes are also looking at introducing an apprenticeship/traineeship system and are interested in what happens in Australia because they hear "lots of good things".

We are doing quite a lot, and it is being noticed, even if we are not part of the cash hand-out in the European Union.

Richard