Everything old is new again

The Prime Minister has trumpeted the fifth round of a $2.5 billion, 10-year program that has allocated almost $1.5bn.

David McIness, principal of Sydney's Marist College

MORE than six years after Kevin Rudd promised a trade training centre in all schools, the Prime Minister has trumpeted the fifth round of a $2.5 billion, 10-year program that has allocated almost $1.5bn but completed only about 260 facilities.

On the hustings at St Mary's Catholic College in Cairns, Mr Rudd announced his pride in the approval of a further round of new Trade Training Centres across Australia, which had "all been part of our planning over the years".

"It's a huge additional number of more than 120 new ones, that we're going to have 500 or so across the country, supporting 1500 secondary schools across the country because some schools pool together with a single Trade Training Centre," he said.

"I couldn't think of a more practical building block than this to help our young people in the future."

In fact, Mr Rudd and Education Minister Bill Shorten in a statement yesterday announced 137 new centres, to be jointly built by 225 high schools across the nation.

The latest round brings to 510 the number of centres announced, with 299 built and 263 in use training students in about 770 schools in trades from hospitality to construction to engineering.

The original vision outlined by Mr Rudd as opposition leader in his 2007 budget in reply speech was for facilities "in all Australia's 2650 secondary schools" but the program allocates between $500,000 and $1.5 million to each school, which are encouraged to form clusters to pool their funding and build a joint facility on one campus.

Schools were invited to apply for the fifth round of funding last November by former school education minister Peter Garrett, with applications closing at the end of March this year, feeding the perception that the announcement was timed to coincide with the election campaign.

One centre that is functioning, though not officially completed for another few months, is at Marist College Pagewood in south-east Sydney, in the blue-collar electorate of Kingsford-Smith, the former seat of Mr Garrett, who is retiring from politics at this election.

The school received about $1m from the federal scheme in 2011 and put it toward a $7m centre that trains boys in hospitality, construction trades, the automotive trades and also includes specialist spaces for music and art.

The Catholic Education Office of Sydney funded half the centre, and the school borrowed the rest of the money.

Principal David McInnes said the centre was key to the school's ambition of setting every student on a pathway for when they left school, whether it was into a university degree, a job or completing trade qualifications at TAFE.

The workshops and kitchens are of a commercial standard, and the kitchen so professional "it would make Neil Perry weep", he said.

"Traditionally in boys' schools, you have a number of students who have almost grown out of school and we have to find meaningful courses for them, so when they leave school they have a path ahead of them," Mr McInnes said.