Labor promises $175m for five new technical colleges to boost vocational workers in SA

Labor would spent $175m on five new tech colleges across SA, to create more workers across a broad range of careers, from chefs to plumbers, carers and engineers.

Five public technical colleges would be built across South Australia to tackle chronic skill shortages, encourage people to enter vocational education and boost school completion rates under a Labor government, the Opposition says.

Continuing a blitz of education policy announcements, Labor says it would spend $175m to build three technical colleges in metro Adelaide and two in regional SA if elected at the March 2022 state election.

The colleges will co-located on existing high school sites. The exact locations of the colleges are yet to be announced.

An extra $30 million would be allocated for operating costs.

The first of the colleges would be open by 2024 and all would be operating during the 2022-2026 term of government.

The courses on offer would aim to provide career pathways into a broad range of areas including building and construction industries (carpentry, bricklaying and plumbing); community services and hospitality (bakers, chefs and aged-care workers); and engineering and information technology sectors (vehicle mechanics, auto electricians and engineers).

The announcement on Monday follows a series of education policies Labor has rolled out over the past week, including empowering school principals to sack underperforming teachers and introducing a mid-year intake for preschool and reception.

Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas said SA faced a “triple challenge” of skills shortages, lagging uptake of vocational courses and stagnating school completion rates.

“Our five new technical colleges can help address these challenges, by guiding students on a pathway towards a career post-school,” he said.

“This will ensure young people graduate from school with the power to make choices for their future.”

Labor said evidence shows school completion rates have hovered between 72 per cent and 75 per cent since 2016, below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s average of 80 per cent and other developed countries that have finishing rates in the 80s and low 90s.

It also said evidence shows industries with the highest levels of vacancies, such as construction, automotive and food trades, are crying out for people with vocational qualifications.

Opposition education spokesman Blair Boyer said the technical colleges would “bring the practical outcomes of trades schools together with new technologies”.

Education Minister John Gardner said Labor’s latest education announcement “just means five new buildings at existing schools”.

Mr Gardner said the state government had recently undertaken the most significant reforms of vocational education and training in a generation to ensure every public school was providing flexible industry pathways.

“These reforms are seeing nation leading increases in school-based apprenticeships and traineeships,” he said.

Over the past week, Labor has announced a range of pre-election education policies, including a universal plan for preschool for three-year-olds and extended out-of-hours care for young children to be investigated by a Royal Commission; increasing permanency among teachers; extending allowances to country teachers to increase retention; working with universities to set a minimum ATAR entry score of 70 for teaching degrees; offering 400 scholarships for teaching degrees; and hiring 100 mental health and learning difficulty specialists for schools.

Labor also announced it wanted to give school principals the authority to fire underperforming teachers and accelerate the process for dealing with such teachers from about 10 months to 10 weeks.

The Australian Education Union fired back at the pledge, labelling it “populist politics” and saying it was “bad policy to wait until the pointy end of underperforming to take action”.