Support for trade careers 'well overdue'

By THERESA GARNER

Onehunga High School careers adviser Lorraine Jackson was so delighted about the Tertiary Education Commission's statement about trades and apprenticeships that she pinned it up in the staffroom.

She is overjoyed that senior education bureaucrats are demanding respect be paid to careers that she has watched her students blossom in.

Her recommendation to bright students who want to pursue a trade is to do business courses too and get holiday work as labourers. "They can end up owning the business one day."

Mrs Jackson encourages students to have three career paths in mind as they near the time to leave school, in case one option falls down, and to look inside themselves for what would suit them best.

She battles with parental attitudes that university is the only pathway. "There is snobbery, and the other one is when people have been in a trade and they denigrate themselves and they are hoping to live through their kids."

For most students a job they are happy in is more important than how to make the most money, Mrs Jackson says.

"What we talk about is passion, and money will follow."

National's education spokesman, Bill English, agrees that children "shouldn't just automatically drift into university".

But he is against any moves that would restrict course numbers for popular degrees such as law, commerce and business, which are undertaken by a third of tertiary students.

"I'm encouraging employers and industry training organisations to make sure career counsellors in schools know more about the options," Mr English says.

Bernard Te Paa, northern regional manager for the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation, says the commission's comments are refreshing.

"From time to time I've had a schoolteacher or careers adviser ring us up and say they have got a person who isn't doing well at school so we had thought we would throw him in a trade.

"Really, industry did need those with a bit of nous.

"You can earn serious money," he says. "There are those in the seven- figure bracket who have come up from carpentry apprenticeships.

"I would hope that Joe Public will be more the wiser for the statement."

The Flooring Industry Training Organisation says apprentices in Auckland can start on $12.50 and work up to $26 an hour.

Clive Johnson, of the Plastics and Materials Processing Industry Training Organisation, says the industry struggles to get young people interested and the statement is "not before time".

"For the last generation we've been telling people to go to university to get a degree if you want to succeed," he says.

"The reality of the marketplace is that people can get quite a high wage because of the shortage of technically qualified people out there."

Kiwi Careers