VET that we deal with are working from a fairly low base in terms of confidence and motivation” and don’ t have the skills to make a phone call to a training provider or make a decision about which course to enrol in or which career to pursue.“ There is indecision, they make u-turns, which means that the overall support [ needed from CVCAL staff ] is that much more onerous.”
“ The students’ lack of readiness for VET and some training providers’ inability to adequately cater for the young people’ s needs meant that staff engaged in time-consuming consultations with students to find the most suitable and realistic training options.”
Myconos pointed out that the group of students in the Frankston program has special needs, which his organisation can cater for but which training providers are not always able to consider:“ The young people have a really tenuous link to education, having just re-engaged. Some of them haven’ t been to school for two or three years, given anxiety, depression, suffering violence at home, drug dependency, the whole box and dice.
“ They enter a re-engagement program like ours, but that means there are two learning environments running concurrently. There’ s the classroom-based learning in a re-engagement program like ours – it’ s a low student / teacher ratio, very nonadversarial wrap-around service, student led, very secure and intimate environment, trained secondary teachers and a very flexible curriculum.
“ You’ ve got that happening in one setting, but for one or two days a week they switch to a very different VET environment where they, or the programs they’ re in, may pay for a private RTO that has almost diametrically opposed features.
“ You could have high student / teacher ratios and the VET trainers can often be unaccustomed to dealing with 15- to 19-year-olds let alone those with real issues, and so the list goes on. It can be a very intimidating setting.”
While TAFE institutes traditionally have some support systems available, private RTOs struggle to accommodate the additional needs of this cohort, said Myconos.“ The TAFEs have some wellbeing support but we think of the many private RTOs that wouldn’ t. So these kids are switching, within the same week, from a very supportive environment to one that’ s quite arms-length; and of course the training is much more competency based, and book heavy, which brings questions of literacy into play.”
Even TAFE institutes with extra support services – now under attack from government cutbacks – are not an ideal setting for these young people.“ There is the intimidating setting of a larger TAFE campus, a more crowded campus, mixed age groups and the like. I remember one kid saying that if only we could have sort of smaller spaces in bigger places.
“ Those big institutions needn’ t be alienating and it may be that the more fragmented landscape made up of more of these tiny little re-engagement programs is the answer, or maybe it’ s not. Maybe it’ s just making bigger institutions more nimble, more nuanced.”
Myconos offered a range of suggestions for better co-ordination between the CVCAL program and VET providers.“ Institutional changes need to happen to try to bring these two sectors – the re-engagement sector, a growing sector, and the VET sector – into line. On an institutional level, the organisations that we have spoken to, the TAFEs and the private providers, they are all sensitive to the needs of more collaborative case management, better transition support, better information sharing.”
At present, important information is not shared between the
One effect of the VET cuts is that there will be fewer RTOs providing much maligned courses such as hospitality, personal training and retail parties.“ We have kids that we expect to be attending their VET programs when they may not be, and we have kids whom we know are attending but not making any progress, and yet there’ s no formal institutionalised systems whereby the one educational organisation is saying to the other one‘ Do you know this is happening or this is happening?’
“ From the training provider’ s point of view, I’ m sure they’ d like to know whether this 16-year-old boy has had a history of depression or anxiety or low literacy or whether they’ ve been homeless in the last week, or if a boy’ s behaving in a certain way that there might be reasons for it. So there have to be more of those institutional links,” Myconos said.
One of the solutions to the problem is to improve the relationships between the CVCAL and VET institutional staff, so that all parties are aware of the range of difficulties this cohort of young people is dealing with.“ When we have these discussions [ with training providers ] we all seem to come back to this point of relationships: it’ s a matter of everyone, trainers, people who enrol people, people who run courses, being attuned to the turbulent times that the kids are going through.”
All stakeholders need to be aware of the world of these young people, said Myconos.“ The culture that they’ re living in, the insecurity and anxiety that they’ re dealing with; and then add another layer to that where you might have these kids also dealing with history of personal problems, familial problems, self problems, violence.”
Myconos asked VET training providers to revise their view of these students.“ These 17- to 18-year-olds sitting in the VET training room might seem an adult, and they might be in the city in an adult setting, but they’ re living through such turbulent times and may be dealing with so much, so it’ s a question of being attuned to that.”
Ultimately Myconos called for educational sectors to work on removing the cultural gaps separating them.“ We have hundreds of thousands of 15- to 19-year-olds doing VET, so I don’ t think we can think of these sectors – secondary, re-engagement, Catholic and independent, VET and higher education – as separate sectors. The numbers of kids that in one moment are in a secondary school or reengagement program and then in another moment they’ re in a TAFE or a private RTO is enormous, and I think that we have to get our heads around that overlap.”
There is so much overlap that if our society is to cater for the most disadvantaged, it needs to ensure there are“ more cultural and institutional linkages”, at least between the school, reengagement and VET sectors.
In his report, Myconos formally recommended that the CVCAL operation“ build closer relationships with training organisations – particularly TAFEs – to improve enrolment, wellbeing and learning outcomes for CVCAL students undertaking VET subjects. This may build on existing efforts to tailor VET programs specifically for the CVCAL cohort”.
The problem is that Myconos’ s evidence-based recommendation will require additional funding, just at that moment in history when his state government has reduced funding for VCAL and TAFE institutes. History can be the judge of our society. ■
See the reports at www. bsl. org. au / Research-reports
Dr John Mitchell is a VET researcher and consultant www. jma. com. au
www. campusreview. com. au February 2013 | 37