Report argues for stronger secondary trades pathway, specialist schools

A new report from the New Zealand Initiative is calling for a stronger secondary pathway for trades, including the establishment of a new qualification for industry training.

The report, titled Trade Routes: Charting New Pathways from Secondary School to Industry Training, outlines the current fragmented routes to industry training and argues that trades is devalued in favour of university education.  

Its author is Michael Johnston, the same academic behind recent sweeping reforms to education. He argues that the “cultural esteem” of trades needs to be raised and says this can be achieved by ensuring clear pathways to trades and positioning vocational training on equal footing with university pathways, in part through a dedicated qualification. 

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Currently, only six percent of school leavers take industry-training pathways.  

“The situation represents a waste of human capital and opportunity. Industry training can lead to many high-demand vocations,” said Johnston.  

Johnston’s report compares this to countries such as Germany, which has a strong trades pathway built into their education system. There, around half of school leavers go into industry training. Taking cues from the German model, one of Johnston’s proposals includes allowing some schools to become “trades specialist” schools.  

“You would have some schools that were from Year 11 on perhaps geared toward university and others geared toward apprenticeships. That would raise the prominence of the trade training track and give students a clear option,” said Johnston.  

Johnston also wanted to establish a specific qualification for school leavers planning to take a trades pathway.  

“While UE provides a clear pathway to university, there is no similarly well-signalled pathway into post-school vocational education,” reads the report. It continues that this new qualification should be based on existing Vocational Pathways.  

Johnston’s report said that these changes would rely on an overhaul of the Tomorrow’s Schools system, saying the current model doesn’t allow for the wide-spread cooperation necessary to deliver his propsals.  

The New Zealand Institute is currently preparing another, separate report on school reform that would bear “both similarities and differences” to proposals made in the Tomorrows Schools Independent Taskforce report published in 2018. 

The full report and its recommendations can be found here. 

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