By Rob Lewis
Australia's education system is currently undergoing major restructuring. The blueprint for reform is the 1991 Finn Report, which is seen by its makers as an integral part of a "worker-led" economic recovery and the means by which Australia's economy will make the transition to the so-called post-industrial era.
Spearheading reform is the ACTU's Laurie Carmichael, head of the Employment and Skills Formation Council and policy adviser to the Finn Review Committee. The Finn Report outlines a program of reform intended to make schooling and the curriculum more relevant to the needs of industry.
The Finn Review Committee was initially asked by the Australian Education Council to look at "access' and "equity" issues' — in particular to investigate the barriers that worked against the participation of disadvantaged groups in post-compulsory education and training. Instead, the Finn Committee has taken up the agenda of the National Industry Education Forum, a powerful business lobby group.
While still minister for employment, education and arts, John Dawkins claimed "the main purpose of education is economic, and the clear function of schooling in Australia is the preparation of youth with employment 'competencies'".
The report lists a set of "generic" or "key" competencies deemed necessary (by employers) for success in "the world of work". These include communication skills (oral and written), problem-solving and reasoning skills and basic numeracy skills.
While the report argues that testable employment-related competencies are not intended to supplant the existing Liberal-academic curriculum, the integration of key competency areas deepens the process of putting basic education even more firmly within a vocational context.
Vocational training
A major initiative of the Finn Report is the establishment of local industry vocational training for young people. In collaboration with TAFE colleges and local employers, the new Vocational Training Schools (VTS) are to create "trainee positions", supposedly to facilitate the "transferability" of school leavers to the work force. Rather than providing full-time, fully paid jobs, local employers are being asked to take on trainees who are to work for two and half days and study for two and a half days per week (for a likely three-year period).
The kind of vocational training available to young people will, of course, depend on their parents' income. The education "marketplace" will offer middle-class parents the option of sending their children to private schools or "specialist" schools, or to a VTS, which y option available for the majority of young people of working-class backgrounds.
According to the report, by 1995 all 18 year olds are to achieve year 12 participation (or level 1 traineeship). By 2001, all 20 year olds are to achieve level 2 traineeship or progress to higher level of vocational or academic qualification. And, also by 2001, 50% of all 22 year olds are to achieve at least a vocational certificate (level 3) or progress to vocational training above level 3 or a diploma or a degree.
It has been claimed that the new competency-based system should lead to "equal pay for equal work". But this is not the case, as government and business are intent on introducing "trainee" wages and allowances which will be lower than the current junior award payments (approximately $117 per week).
It has been widely acknowledged by welfare organisations that the proposed trainee wage is likely to place many young people at risk, reinforcing their economic dependency, and not removing the threat of poverty, thus reducing the motivation for young people to participate in post-compulsory education and training.
Speaking at Sydney University, Laurie Carmichael recently said the report had been well received by the business sector, which is not surprising considering that the Finn Review Committee comprised (in addition to Carmichael) Brian Finn of IBM, two private business managers and five managers from the public education sector.
The new curriculum framework and the national standardisation of assessment and credentialling will better enable government and industry to monitor the work force and the labour market.
The competencies grid is to be linked to work classifications, and hence wage levels, through the restructuring of industrial awards. Workers will have to demonstrate competency within increasingly fewer award classifications, implying progress from one skill level to the next throughout their working lives. Failing to do so, they are likely to be retrenched, demoted or sent off for retraining.
Peripheral workers
Among education workers, there is concern that, despite the claim training will apply to all workers under award restructuring, the peripheral work force — part-time workers, women, immigrants and those with literacy problems — will lose out.
Employers are likely to direct resources to those workers who can be of the most immediate value to industry and who will require the least amount of educational input. Literacy problems and social circumstances will preclude many peripheral workers from participation. Inability to participate in training will condemn others permanently to low-skill, low-wage award levels.
The Finn Report comes at a time when youth unemployment is at an all icial national average unemployment level for the 15-19 year old age group currently at 32.8%. School retention rates have increased nationally from 34.5% in 1980 to 70% in 1991, mainly due to the problems of finding work.
While Carmichael acknowledges that extended vocational training will "keep young people off the streets", he is adamant this is not the point and asserts that the vocationalisation of secondary schooling is consistent with current trends. He claims that 70% of 15-19 year olds are already engaged in post-compulsory education, and that the proposal to raise retention rates to 95% by the turn of the century is quite achievable.
However, while many would-be school leavers are forced to stay on till year 12 by the current economic climate, they are not electing to pursue vocational training, but rather academic studies at university (only to be confounded by the lack of available places).
The prevailing view in the community, according to research conducted for the Department of Employment, Education and Training by the Australian National Opinion Poll, is that vocational training is a second-class option. Carmichael and the Finn Review supporters say community attitudes must change. That is, the community must place higher value on practical or manual work even though employers pay less for it.
Coopting
According to Carmichael, the declining importance of production-line and process work raises the need for "human capital" to be developed, so that the Australian economy can keep pace with the global transition toward the "post-industrial era".
Extended vocational training is, for Carmichael, an integral part of a left-wing strategy to "democratise" and "humanise" the new organisation of work, while boosting productivity. With supposedly greater participation in decision making, workers are to be liberated from the alienation they suffer under the old autocratic management model.
But this takes no account at all of the ownership of the means of production. Carmichael does not suggest that capital-labour relations be collectivised or superseded. Nor does he opt for a more politicised and comprehensive model of education and curriculum.
Rather, he implicitly redefines labour's role in the capital-labour relationship. Implied in the control of production and work practices is the control of workers by workers, on behalf of management. That means the cooption of labour into a de facto managerial role of surveillance.
The alleged convergence of interests of workers and industry, as presented by Carmichael, is no more than an ideological project intended to mask the instrumentalist objectives of reform: to deliver to industry a more compliant, flexible and vocationally trained work force and reserve supply of labour.