This is not the time to climb onto the “ain’t never gonna happen” bandwagon that is rolling on and over the promises of a bright LNG-funded future for B.C.
To jump on board now would be crass, what with government bogged down in an economic mire not of its own making and the premier trying to explain that falling oil prices and a tough economy have altered the government’s liquefied natural gas playbook, making it more difficult to predict which LNG plants will go ahead or how or when.
Still, it seems an odd time for government to be distributing an even odder document entitled B.C.’s Skills for Jobs Blueprint: Re-Engineering Education and Training.
The document, from WorkBC, is not new but has resurfaced with news that the LNG game plan is suddenly in need of revision.
The cover graphics alone of the document raised educational hackles even before the text itself had a chance to offend.
The notion of “re-engineering” education is supported on the cover by a series of graphics including a hammer crossed diagonally, thankfully not with a sickle, but with a screwdriver and wrench. There is also a graphic of three cogs working together, presumably representing the idea that trades education is something that simply needs mechanical adjustment before it will be ticking along smoothly.
And that’s just the cover of a very political, not an educational, document.
Despite the claim on page one that “we are re-engineering education … so that B.C. students … have the skills to be first in line for jobs in a growing economy” pages 24 through 40 of a 45-page document make it clear that this is all dependent on the LNG promise being fulfilled.
Pages 38 to 40 are about recruiting from across Canada and “utilizing skilled international workers.”
Those inclusions in the Blueprint seem to be an implicit admission that kids in B.C. are not being prepared for careers in trades, much less the trade career bounty that LNG promised.
Trades education in B.C.’s secondary schools has been struggling for years with low enrolments while a succession of ministers of education has talked about “academic rigour” and the importance of “scholastic excellence.”
Probably 75 per cent of parents, when asked about their offspring’s post-secondary aspirations, talk about university or college. Yet only about 15 per cent of secondary grads will enter a university.
In 2013, Mike Howard, then president of the B.C. Technology Education Association, quoted a Canadian Apprenticeship Forum and Skills Canada study that found that while 32 per cent of high school students said they would consider a career in skilled trades, the average age of entry for apprenticeships in Canada is 25, which suggested that high-school students do not see apprenticeship as the best immediate pathway to the job market.
It’s true that some of the sons and daughters of tradespeople will follow in their parents’ footsteps, but otherwise, guiding your kid toward a trade is something many non-trades parents do not even consider.
Then there is the capital cost of acquiring and maintaining up-to-date equipment for any form of industrial/technical or pre-trades education in secondary schools.
Nonetheless, trades educators, especially at the secondary-school level, experienced a momentary flicker of optimism when it seemed that government, through WorkBC, might be refocusing on practical arts.
But no, that ancient drill press in the metal-work shop or the 1970s equipment in the auto-repair shop will not be updated before 2020 at least, and apparently only then if LNG is up and running.
Along with the already-mentioned factors inhibiting the growth of trades prep courses in B.C. secondary schools, there is the requirement that trades teachers possess both trade certification and formal teacher training.
Many tradespeople, quite capable of teaching a trades course, have no wish to take a year of no-income teacher-training that they see as unnecessary.
With fewer teachers, reluctance on the part of parents and students, aging equipment and increased class size, it will need more than the promise of an LNG bonanza to get secondary-school trades education back on its feet.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
