Queenslanders embrace a ticket to train

Vol 18. Number 01, January/February 2009
By Pat Coulter

The lives of Queenslanders have been enriched by vocational education and training for more than 150 years.

In 1849, a decade before Queensland's colonisation, the North Brisbane School of Arts and Mechanics' Institute opened, catering to a student body of mostly middle class children.

When the gold rush, mining exploration and the railway kick-started industries such as agriculture and manufacturing, the need for skilled workers increased.

Early training advocates included former Premier Charles Lilley and Scottish-born John Douglas, who swapped his sheep station skills for politics.

Both men wanted training institutions to offer broad skills.

Douglas founded the Spring Hill Mechanics' Institute in 1864 before becoming president of the North Brisbane School of Arts, which still stands today in Ann Street.

'The mechanic will certainly be no worse a mechanic, and he will be an infinitely better man and a more useful citizen if he knows something of the laws which govern the universe and which surround him with the most inexhaustible beneficence,' Douglas said at the time.

The Brisbane Technical College opened under the auspices of the School of Arts and welcomed its first dozen students at a mechanical drawing class in 1882.

The college wanted to broaden knowledge with writing, algebra, geometry and Latin alongside mechanics and trades, though poor attendance saw plans abandoned.

But by 1889, subjects included architecture, construction, drawing, mineralogy and French.

Eddie Clarke's Technical and Further Education in Queensland (available from Library Services' website ) describes mathematics and chemistry as an essential part of a technical college curriculum, which were still offered even when their enrolments dropped to as low as one or two.

Fluctuating numbers saw fees introduced and colleges come and go, as training underwent a turbulent turn of the century.

Close to 50 schools of the arts had been established around Queensland and by 1902, there were 33 technical colleges including a pharmacy institution - but some lasted less than four years.

Behind the scenes, infighting over operations saw the rise and fall of the Board of Technical Education, while a depression and drought put a dampener on the state's burgeoning development.

But it bounced back.

After visiting the Ipswich Technical College in the early 1900s, where 273 students were enrolled in a host of subjects, inspector James Platt said Queensland's greatest benefit from training was 'the withdrawing of its youth from the frivolity, vanity, and lust that infest the mind when vacant, and endangers the manhood of the nation'.

Several of Brisbane's technical colleges amalgamated in 1910 and by 1918, as the department gradually took over operations, many high schools became attached to technical colleges - a trend which later waned but is being embraced again as in the Innisfail educational precinct, which opens next year.

Vocational centres around Queensland gave free manual arts training and domestic science classes for primary students and fee-paying adults, with 45 operating in 1937.

Regional areas welcomed them and Maud Day, from the Country Women's Association, believed if Cloncurry had a technical college in the 1930s, then 'gambling, drinking, with their developing evils, would not claim so many young lads'.

In the early days of vocational training, teachers travelled by train to deliver training to more remote locations.

Trade training dropped during the 1930s Depression, and the following World War saw a focus on supporting the armed services. Technical colleges offered training that supported the armed services and after the war, supported returned officers with skills for finding work.

In the Fifties and in the face of new technology there were calls for a more skilled workforce.

Director of Technical Education Clive Evans argued Queensland could not 'maintain a jet aeroplane age on a coach-horse economy and technical education system'.

Colleges for music, art and agriculture began offering specialised training during the 1960s, and one of the sector's biggest changes followed the Commonwealth's 1974 Kangan Report, which shaped technical and further education (TAFE).

Professions, trades and an extended curriculum covered relevant and emerging industries such as winemaking and renewable energy, along with targeted courses for Indigenous students and adult literacy and numeracy.

Lessons have also become lasting legacies, such as making coastal shark nets and hospital pillows. Students from the former Redland Community College were thought to be Australia's first to build their own facility on North Stradbroke Island in 1990.

Today partnerships between schools, training institutions and organisations mean more Queenslanders take up traineeships and apprenticeships than anywhere else in Australia - a remarkable feat considering arrangements began as verbal deals between employers and parents, before the first official apprentices were signed up in 1921.

The face of TAFE colleges has also changed - with new names and more autonomy as separate institutions - but more than ever, they are linking students between school and further study, university and work as part of the Queensland Skills Plan.

And as new industries emerge alongside traditional enterprises, the training ride looks set to continue long into the future.