Dom Post on National’s skills policy

The Dom Post approves of National’s proposed skills policy. Their editorial concludes:

Mr Key wants to make the same opportunities available to other students by rewriting the curriculum, making it easier for skilled tradespeople to qualify as teachers, paying them the same rates as university-educated colleagues, encouraging more local businesses to get involved, allowing students to train outside school grounds, establishing trade academies at a select group of schools and allowing students to begin apprenticeships while still at school.

Those are just the sorts of initiatives that are needed to equip New Zealand and New Zealand kids for the future. National’s proposals recognise that not every child is suited to an academic career. They also recognise that, as well as lawyers, accountants and policy analysts, New Zealand needs plumbers to unblock the drains, mechanics to keep the vehicle fleet running and chippies to build houses.

In fact, as anyone who has recently had to call out a plumber or tried to find a builder to renovate their home knows, a life spent clambering around building sites can be just as financially rewarding as a life spent behind a desk.

Instead of pooh-poohing Mr Key’s proposals, Miss Clark would be wise to see which of them she can pinch. Even the Post Primary Teachers Association, not normally an organisation that aligns itself with National, has hailed the party’s moves to address what it calls a “technology teacher crisis”.

DPF’s first law of politics in education:

If National and the PPTA agree on something, it must be the right thing to do