School and Work

This is a work immediately topical to a large number of teachers and students concerned (with much justification) about the lack of a proper link between school and employment after schooling. The tragedy is that unemployment often hits those in the fifteen to nineteen year old age group, who are unskilled and semi-skilled, ill prepared for the transition to a workplace increasingly demanding higher qualifications. The Technical Teachers’ Association of Victoria (TTAV) released a document in 1977 called Submission to the Committee of Enquiry into Education and Training, which acknowledges problems of this kind and calls for remedies in the form of Work Experience, greater TAFE funding, the greater co-ordination of government, business and teacher groups, formation of ‘clusters’ of educational institutions, and an end to discrimination against girls and women in the TAFE area of occupations.