Providing Education and Training for At Risk ... - Victoria University

The research literature on ‘alienated’ or at-risk youth is clear that the focus of well-designedprograms can be found in their allegiance to the experiential integrity of the young peoplethemselves. But schools, at least, if Ryan and Sercombe are right, will have to change out ofall recognition if ‘alienated youth’ programs are to be mainstreamed. Just getting a traditionalsenior secondary environment to seriously consider adult learning strategies in its classroomsis a large task. The further task of moving those strategies into shop-front or other communitysettings down around the corner - ‘mainstreeting’ the mainstream - is a massive hope.Worthwhile program design does, however, require that kind of hope. Alienated youth,especially those who may be attracted back to successful studies, such as the Youth Allowanceintends, are unlikely to return to an environment which itself alienated them, in the first place.But examples of worthwhile program design in schools in Victoria already exist. Batten (1989)in her detailed research on the STC course, concluded that, although ‘evidence of its successand influence is not hard to find’, it would ‘not be able to continue in its present form after1991’ (p217). This situation arose initially because of the inadequacy of the traditional narrowlyfocussed academic HSC, which was eroding school retention and student participation. It wasthe ‘Blackburn Report’ into post-compulsory schooling (1985), in its support for a singlecertificate, which denied the continuation of whole-course school-based curriculum diversity.This meant that, while the new two-year Victorian Certificate of Education, phased in between1989 and 1992, was serious about practical studies, and studies of work, it was not able tomeld these to any vocational, as opposed to academic, purposes. Yet the education researcher,Dean Ashenden (in Batten: 217), claimed of the STC course:The Victorian STC program is easily the best and most successful of the Australianattempts at an ‘alternative’ approach to democratic education. It has grown quickly [43schools in 1984; 117 schools in 1987]. It has succeeded in keeping at school many kidswho would otherwise have left. (emphasis added)The STC course had a set of educational principles, presented as a set of Course Intentions,and as a Checklist. The Checklist urged a whole-school program, within which:Classes should be organised on the basis of—close student-teacher and student-student interaction;—co-operation rather than competition;—heterogenous grouping;—commitment to the success of all individuals;—challenging, worthwhile units of work that reflect the everyday experiences of allstudents;—units which reflect the diverse character of society;—units which achieve a balance of action and reflection;—and which integrate theoretical and applied knowledge. (Freeman 1987:5)STC, even with inclusivity (as above) as its core concept, along with its cousins (the TOP andthe T12 certificates) were always on the educational margins, even although they successfullytargeted ‘at risk’ students. Now, ten years since Blackburn, Keating (1995) concludes his analysisof the implications for Australian schools of vocational education and training by claimingthat training reforms challenge that marginalisation:26