Hi Cornflower,

24 hours are up :)

You were asking:

"What many would most likely want to hear about is the number of men and women successfully undertaking trade apprenticeship and other trainee programs, where all levels of government and private industry have assisted opportunities in place, along with a the usual range of mentors that one finds in Aboriginal education....."

You can find data on the NCVER web-site, for example:

http://www.ncver.edu.au/statistic/publications/2329.html

but usually data are presented in the form of percentages, which is absolutely maddening. However, every so often, they let actual numbers slip through. In one 2002 paper, for example:

"The number of indigenous apprentices and trainees has increased by 75 %, from 4,000 in 1998 to 7,000 in 2002. Over the same period, the growth in non-Indigenous apprentices was 104 %. Indigenous apprentices and trainees represented 1.9 % of all apprentices and trainees in 2002, compared to 1.8 % in 1998."

Total VET enrolment in that year was 79,600, the vast majority of whom were enrolled in low-level certificate I, II and III courses. The numbers enrolled at top-level TAFE/VET courses is - I suspect - not much more than a thousand across the country. Even many of the apprenticeship courses seem to be Certificate III, or even II, but don't quote me on that :)

But even those 2002 figures may have to be treated with some caution: what fields were those 7,000 apprentices registered in ? are there 'soft' apprenticeship fields ? How come Indigenous tradespeople are not anywhere near as plentiful as uni graduates, in the cities, towns or at remote communities ? Of the few Indigenous apprentices who I know of who have completed their training, few if any are working in their fields.

[TBC]

[contd]

I also suspect that TAFE - i.e. at its lowest levels - is seen by many in the Indigenous community as the appropriate level of education for indigenous people, not university: 'university is for whites, TAFE is for Blacks'.

So, for the past thirty years, TAFE colleges have allowed the development of Indigenous enclaves, empires, and for BS courses to be written up as 'Aboriginal TAFE' courses, and Indigenous people have been decanted into these courses, which they could do over and over again, and which got them precisely nowhere.

As a result, many who have been through this experience decry education in general, especially 'Western' education, since the years of TAFE study got them nowhere: 'we are the most over-qualified people in Australia,' one guy said to me. Well, yes, in purely crap courses.

I studied as, inter alia, a TAFE teacher, but turned instead to working in the tertiary sector, and I've certainly never regretted it. I liaised with many Aboriginal programs at TAFE colleges - many have large numbers of Indigenous students, happily studying for ten and fifteen years on various Cert I, II and III courses, often the same course year after year.

One guy I know has been studying at TAFE colleges, and at Tauondi, the Aboriginal College here in Adelaide, and finally on to universities, since 1973, when Tauondi started up. Clever b@stard, he got the state to pay him Study Grant for 35 years [he could still be studying at 56, I don't know], a total of around half a million dollars.

So he skimped and scrounged and tried to raise a family on poverty wages all that time. What could he have made in that time if he had gone straight through into uni and onto employment ? Two million ? Yeah, a real clever b@stard.

What the VET sector for Indigenous people and communities could be doing if it lifted its game ? Unimaginable !

Joe

I suspect the causes are simpler, for instance that expectations are set in primary and secondary education by well-meaning but ignorant teachers. It is the same for girls and all in the name of 'equity'.

On the other hand the young chippie who did most of the work on our recent duplex development comes from a local indigenous family with a tradition of being in employment. He has plenty of work and is doing well. Ask him and he will tell you that teachers tried to school him towards cultural studies and university but he "held out" and was "lucky" because his uncle Mick has a small earthmoving business and "stood up for him", putting him onto a builder he knew.

In fact it is hard for indigenous kids who want to work with their hands to be treated seriously, encouraged and supported. The same is true for the general population.

Cornflower,

Either way, uni or TAFE, professional or trades skills, that's the way to go. And I am very confident that that is what rapidly growing numbers of young Indigenous people will be doing in the next ten and twenty years. At least, that will be the case for young urban-based Indigenous people. God knows how much longer people in 'communities' will have to stay in the doldrums.

It seems to me that the impetus, the dynamism, the push over the next few decades in Indigenous policy, will come from the cities and towns, not from the most depressed and skill-less communities. How, why and in what forms may be very difficult to articulate, but I really do think there is no future in rural-based communities unless there are drastic changes in outlook.

In other words, the cities will drive future Indigenous policy. Discuss.

Joe Lane