A case study in tertiary education

For several months in 1998 I worked one day a week trying to teach software development in a TAFE college.  After disappointing results, I sent a letter to the responsible ministers.  About six weeks later I received a reply from the official in charge of the Victorian TAFE system.

Summary of my letter:
When you make TAFE colleges compete for students those colleges feel compelled to pander rather than teach useful work skills.

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Summary (my words) of the official reply:
Individual TAFE colleges are responsible for their own conduct, please talk to the college concerned.

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Open letter to Ministers of Education, State and Federal

23 Jan, 1999

Hon. Dr David Kemp

Federal Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs

Email: D.Kemp.MP@aph.gov.au

The Hon. Mr Phillip Gude

State Minister for Education, Victoria

Email: c/o: The Hon Jeff Kennett, premier@dpc.vic.gov.au

Subject:    Public money wasted in TAFE

Dear Sirs,

I have recently worked for several months teaching computer programming in a Victorian TAFE college, and feel duty-bound to report that my time and the money spent by your department was largely wasted.

There were a number of glaring problems:

• Students with no computer ability or aptitude were accepted into the classes.
• I saw other teachers teaching computer concepts in a simplistic step-by-step fashion.   While the students liked this method and appeared to make progress, the net result was not people with skills you would pay money for.  You could teach brain surgery a step at a time, but that doesn't produce brain surgeons.
• Students were not aware of what a job working with computers entailed, did not want to know, and the course outline as set down by your department(s) did not require them to learn it.
• Students lacked fundamental skills such as "learning", "thinking" and "questioning" and none of the subjects taught to them at TAFE did anything to address this.

To understand what's going on, it is necessary to look at the perspectives of the students and the teachers:

STUDENTS

• I want a high-income job like computer programming.
• The universities won't accept me because my marks were too low, so I'll do TAFE for a couple of years then get into uni.  It won't cost me much because the government is paying.
• The teacher should give us simple tasks because they are easy and fun.
• The teacher shouldn't try to get us to think because that's not easy or fun.
• Once I have a university degree that's all I'll need to get a job.

TEACHERS

• If the students learn more and are happier following step-by-step instructions, so be it.
• If we don't pander to the students, they will take their money elsewhere (and the government funds will go with them).
• We can always teach them real-world skills later.
• Why should I be the only one to stick my neck out and do something different?
• I have family responsibilities and my first priority should be for the welfare of my own children.

EMPLOYERS

• It's very hard to get people with the skills we require - what are these tertiary institutions doing?
• I guess I could let the world know what I think would make a good employee, but how is my lone voice going to change the way courses are run?
• Employees want too much and are offering too little.

You may well be thinking, "Well I'm only the Minister - this guy was right at the front line - why didn't he do something?"

Well I tried a lot of things.  One of the more interesting was to decide that if the problem was a lack of learning skills, then learning skills should be taught and the computer prattle set aside for a couple of weeks.

Faced with students who had no idea of how to take the first step in completing a simple assignment, I turned to Edward de Bono's CoRT program (refer www.edwdebono.com).  The complete program covers several months so I selected a couple of lessons most appropriate to the students' problems.

To my mind, the CoRT program was miraculous.  Students who had previously been unable to think of a single question or make a meaningful statement about what they had just been learning, suddenly displayed inquiring minds.  To many of the students, however, the CoRT lessons seemed like just a distraction.  They felt that the memorisation of a few computer techniques and some techno-jargon was progress towards a well-paid career and anything else was irrelevant.

From my perspective as an experienced software developer, it seems that people who know computers well but are ineffective thinkers do much more damage to the industry than they ever manage to contribute.  I could not in good conscience strive to produce more of them.

What can you, as ministers, do?

Well looking at your respective web-sites, you both appear to have your hands full making the system look like its functioning adequately.  Taking major steps that do not have broad based public support would take enormous effort and even if implemented successfully, you would have moved on before that success had become apparent.

Perhaps you'd better leave real reform of education to those less encumbered. 

Regards,

Phil Bachmann

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Reply from the director of TAFE in Victoria

I refer to your open letter of 23 January 1999 addressed to Federal and State Ministers of Education concerning the basis for student selection, teaching methods and student expectations in the area of computer programming in a Victorian TAFE College.

The TAFE sector as a publicly funded service, is committed to continuous reform and improvement for the benefit of industry, the community and individual students. Consequently, it is unfortunate that you regard your time spent in the TAFE classroom to be unsatisfactory and the learning and motivational capabilities of students to be negative. Nevertheless, I am pleased to note that having considered the teaching context, you were able to develop a useful teaching strategy using elements of the CoRT program. As you report, this resulted in significant improvements with some individual TAFE students.

This experience illustrates that teaching staff are well able to achieve practical improvements in student performance. From your own experience it is clear that change can occur by the use of appropriate teaching and learning strategies and through the teacher/trainer taking personal initiative and setting an appropriate personal example.

The importance of the ability of the TAFE sector to continue to attract teachers and trainers who have current industry skills is recognised, as is the importance of assistance for staff to be able to deliver their services in ways that stimulate the educational needs of students.

The Victorian TAFE sector is proud of its high degree of autonomy and freedom to meet client needs in flexible ways. Teaching and learning strategies are extremely important practical matters and as you acknowledge, they are best addressed at the local level because they can then be tailored for the local context.

In this regard, it may be useful for you to approach the TAFE Institute concerned to discuss alternative teaching and learning strategies and to provide any suggestions you may wish to offer to broaden the horizons of prospective students.

In conclusion I trust that following discussion and exchange of ideas at the local level, your future teaching experiences in the TAFE sector will be positive.

Yours sincerely

MEREDITH SUSSEX

Director

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