Guest posting to voced-coord email list. Item 6 of 10:
News Flash - Employers jostling to be involved

Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1998 16:16:40 +1100
To: voced-coord@owl.qut.edu.au
From: Richard_Laidlaw@astf.com.au
Subject: News Flash - Employers jostling to be involved

Employer involvement and active partnership are big issues for those involved in the delivery of effective workplace learning.

I don't know that there are any simple answers, but one thing that struck me as quite different in some places was the industry perception of their role in the process, and also student preferences for their life after compulsory schooling.

At one meeting in Wisconsin the plastics employers were meeting with the 10 schools in the district to set up a Youth Apprenticeship program. The coordinator mentioned that they were looking to find a site for training delivery before the workplacement and 4 of the 6 employers in the meeting "discussed the relative merits" of their own sites being used for training delivery. Within 20 minutes they had agreed to share the delivery and cost of the off-job training, had agreed to negotiate with the authorities to make sure that the trainiing would be accredited and had worked out a timetable for the training with the school repreentatives.

The other six employer reps in the meeting thought that they should do something so they agreed to organise an open day and pay for the buses to bring students to their sites and show them the potential of a career in the industry. They also took as given that they would be each taking 5 students for 15 hours a week of on job training and that the students would be paid around $5.00 per hour while at work.

This level of employer commitment was evident in a number of places, and was considered the norm, and when I asked why they thought it was like that most people responded by saying "like what?"

While I was away I used "Let's Go", "Lonely Planet" and "Frommers" guides to make life a bit easier. When I was in Germany I met up with a training manager who had visited Australia three times to study the provision of vocational education and training. When we were talking about impressions of different countries, he took out my Frommers Guide to Germany and his Frommers Guide to Australia (thankfully in English).

He said "The answer to your question lies here in the Frommers Guides. German systems work because we respect the system, and yes, as it says here we do not walk across the road on a red light even if there are no cars coming."

He opened the Australian Guide and showed me the section outlining Australian history. The guide outlines how as a former colony there is still a great desire by the people for the government to lead change, that if something needs to happen then the government should either make it happen or show the direction. The guide also outlines how Australians spend a great deal of time criticising the work of government in Australia.

The training manager said " All I hear when I am in Australia is talk of what the government should do and how they should be doing it better. No-one in industry or schools thought it was entirely up to them to fix it themselves. Work this out, then life will be a lot easier."

His point was that there was too much reliance on the government to drive and fund change.

What do you fellow convicts think of this?

Richard