The Study and Thoughts on Australia’s Educational System

Education Research Frontier December 2015, Volume 5, Issue 4, PP.86-89

The Study and Thoughts on Australia’s Educational System Xin Wang Basics Department, Liaoning Police College, Dalian Liaoning 116000, China Email: cindyteacher@126.com

Abstract The educational system in Australia is not only unique and effective, but also successful and affordable for students from all walks of life. This paper discusses Australia’s educational system, especially the TAFE colleges, points out the enlightment of Australia’s Education to China.

Keywords: Educational System; Assessment Method; TAFE College; Enlightment

1 AUSTRALIA’S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM Australia maintains an education system that is not only unique and effective, but also successful and affordable for students from all walks of life. Each state and territory in Australia independently runs their own form of education from grades 1 to 12. The primary advantage of allowing states to operate their education systems independently is that it allows for implementation of change at much faster rate. As a result, throughout the years, education in each state has evolved into more fairer and efficient systems.

1.1 Australis’s School Education Schools in Australia are divided into three main groups: primary schools; kindergarten or grade 1 to grades 6 or 7 (varies from state to state); secondary high schools: grades 7 or 8 to grade 12; senior colleges: grades 11 and 12 only.

There are many types of education for children up to 5 years, but the main ones are the "Child Care" regulated centers or families in registered residences who take care of the kids in a system called "Family Day Care".

The student goes for secondary school with 12/13 years (year 8), and is he/she is only compulsorily required to stay to year 10, receiving a junior high school certificate but not a high school certificate. The year 11 (15/16 YO) and 12 (16/17 YO), are optional but are required to be successfully completed to attain a high school diploma. Some of the options for those students leaving the school in year 10 include training apprenticeship, to enter the work force or to study in any vocational course.

The results of the last two years of high school are the most important ones, as they are the ones to be evaluated for entry levels in universities. The results which you achieve for each subject (compared to the rest of the students) will then give you a rank. The board of secondary studies calculates an “OP” score (overall position) using a formula of you high school results and a test called “QCS” (in Queensland) which is taken by every year 12 in the state, which is used to compare students (schools) of the same year level between schools. The last 2 years is when students begin to guide their education towards their chosen professions. The students will chose what to study depending on the career in which they intend to follow. For example, a student who wants to do Engineering in university should chose subjects such as physics, and high level mathematics instead of subjects such as history, or biology. For international students there are options with easier level subjects inside the curriculum. There is the easy level English, the easy mathematics etc, and they are the options for the students not going to apply for an academic career in a university course. In general the subjects are divided in letters such as Maths type A, B, C or names such as Board English (harder one) and English Communication (easier one).

In some states, school attendance is compulsory from grade 1 whilst in others from kindergarten. However, in all - 86 www.erfrontier.org

states, students must complete grade 10 after which they receive their Junior Certificate (SSC). Most students go straight on to complete Grades 11 and 12 and obtain their Senior Certificate (HSC). Year 12 or Adult Matriculation is necessary if students want to go on to higher education courses at universities, and also necessary for some Technical and Further Education centres (TAFEs) and private commercial courses.

There are 39 universities in Australia ranging from 3,000 students to 30,000 students. Of these, only 2 are private universities. Attendance to university courses require cut off marks from HSC; however, generally speaking students within the top 50% can gain attendance to a university. The State and Territory Governments have the responsibility for most education and training, including the administration and substantial funding of primary and secondary education, as well as the administration and major funding of Vocational Education and Training (VET).

1.2 Australis’s Unique Assessment Method In Australia, the results of SSC do not impact the student's academic record greatly; it is the results of the HSC, as in many countries, is the most important. Probably one of the most unique and complex systems of assessment in the world would be the one implemented by the Queensland Education board. Instead of grading a student based on a set of exams completed at the end of grade 12, the final result is taken from the students’ overall performance in all exams throughout grades 11 and 12.

Additionally, each subject offered by the board is given a specific weight; the harder a particular subject is, the more weight is assigned. For example, Physics would be given a higher weight than say for example, Accounting. This weight would then be used in conjunction with the students result for the subject to standardize the students' overall performance. Based on this information, students are given a rank within his or her school. As the rank is standardized based on the weight of the subject, all students, regardless of what type of subjects they study can be ranked within the one list.

Although a standard curriculum is set by the board of education, assessments of all subjects differ from school to school as the schools conduct them independently. As such, in order to standardize all school students together, one common exam is required to be undertaken by all grade 12 students each year. This exam, known as the Core Skills Test, is not a knowledge based exam but rather a skills based exam in which students are graded from A (highest) to E (lowest). The generic test examines the student's analytic, deductive, and logic skills. There is no direct bearing on the actual results of the exam for the student; however, the results are used collectively to calculate the level of competition within schools. For example, a school with 80% "A" result has more bright students than a school with say 40% "A" results. This information is then used to standardize all students into a single ranked list for the entire state.

The benefits of this system are that it takes into consideration the amount of effort required to attain high marks in a particular subject. However, the obvious weakness is that it is extremely complex to compute and it becomes substantially harder for a student to get a good rank position if he or she attends an average school.

2 AUSTRALIA’S TAFE COLLEGE The Australian government attaches great importance to the development of vocational education. The government establishes a unified training system and institution qualification standards in the country, and regularly reviews the training institutions. On behalf of the government, COAG Standing Council on Tertiary Education Skills and Employment is responsible for national policies and for guiding the development of vocational education; The government involves in the construction of TAFE colleges, provides finance support and monitors training quality.

The country strengthens vocational education and the close relationship between industry enterprises through relevant government departments and agencies, and updates training packages according to the enterprise needs so as to ensure the benign development of vocational education.

TAFE college courses adopt a variety of rich and colorful teaching methods and means, mainly includes: interaction and discussion, group activities, speech, guiding students’ learning process, activity instructions to the students, counseling learning, individual training and guidance, etc. The specific teaching methods depend on the specific - 87 www.erfrontier.org

teaching content and students' actual demand of choice. In TAFE colleges, the number of class teaching is generally less, will be about 20 people, so the students may have a lot of opportunities to interact in the classroom, the teachers can also pay attention to each student. Training can be in training institutions, also can be carried out in the job site; Main teaching methods include face-to-face teaching in class, field study, online teaching, distance learning, simulated environment, blended learning, etc., are usually used in a variety of ways. TAFE colleges can be personalized customization according to students' individual needs, such as the students who work can choose to receive training in school, or on the job training, and can also combine the two ways to carry out flexible teaching.

The learning time of Australia's vocational education training institutions may vary from short-term training, a few months’ qualification recognition to years of degree education. Students can determine the specific time of learning according to the needs of training. Completing all credit hours and obtaining the corresponding professional skills may mean the end of the courses. TAFE colleges’ part courses are also available with a university degree in the realization of the credit relief, curriculum transformation and convergence, so the students’ associate’s degree can transit smoothly to the college degree.

Australian vocational education embodies the education concept of lifelong learning. It forms the virtuous cycle system of "learning, working, re-learning, re-working". TAFE colleges welcome all who have a willingness to learn, from the apprentice of 12 years old, unemployed young people to even retired workers, everyone can be trained the corresponding courses. More than 60% students of TAFE colleges in Australia are on-the-job personnel, more than 60% of the students are above 25 years old. Not only professional qualification certificate in all walks of life, short courses, on-the-job training but also college degree education, or university degree and graduate education, can be completed in TAFE colleges, which not only provides a multi-function education training platform, also provides a good chance of lifelong learning.

3 THE ENLIGHTMENT OF AUSTRALIA’S EDUCATION TO CHINA 3.1 Advocate a Concept of Lifelong Education, Offer a Variety of Success Way French scholar Paul Lengrand's lifelong education theory is that: society should provide the opportunity of education and studying to human life. The perfect education system should cover all the social members, meet the demands of different social members and provide different contents of education service to social members’ different life stages.

China's education law regulates that the country encourages schools and other institutions of education, social organizations to take measures to create conditions for citizens to receive life-long education. The country should create opportunities to ensure everyone's right to learn from the aspects such as the laws and regulations, funds input, mechanisms, mechanism protection, propaganda of public opinion, build system of flexible learning, provide various forms of education resources, not just the school education and academic education.

3.2 Create a Unified National Vocational Education Standards Unified standards of vocational education is the basis of vocational education quality guarantee, the premise of realizing certificate recognition and credit exchange. Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF) unifies standards of Australia’s vocational education and training schools, and the training package framework is the standardization of Australian vocational education curriculum content, including the standardization of development and implement. These standards are concrete, and can be carried out and supervised. In our country, various industries do not have authoritative and clear professional skill standards, the colleges also lack unified talent training targets and standards there in training professional personnels. Associated with industry association, therefore, the government department should develop a clear authoritative, relatively unified professional skill standards according to their actual needs, which can be the basis for colleges to develop specialty and curriculum.

Thus the colleges can set the talent training scheme and standards according to the vocational skills standards, cultivate and guide students by a unified standards.

3.3 To Guide Enterprises to Actively Participate in Vocational Education One of the important feature of vocational education is that it closely related to profession. Only the enterprises’ - 88 www.erfrontier.org

participation can realize the real connection between vocational education and the markets. Australia has perfect laws and regulations to coordinate cooperation between enterprise and vocational education, vocational education is practical comes mainly from industries’ widely participation in the making and implementation of the standards. In our country, because of the lack of mutual benefit and win-win mechanism, enterprise participation of vocational education enthusiasm is not high. Government departments need to formulate corresponding policies to arouse the enthusiasm of industry enterprises to participate in the higher vocational education, make the colleges education system changes according to different professional requirements of social production, management, administration and service in a timely manner. The colleges should build training and practice base with enterprises, so as to achieve the consistency of training objectives of higher vocational college and enterprise standards of choosing and employing persons, so the graduates can truly qualify their work.

4 CONCLUSIONS The development of lifelong education requires the students to accept education in their own right and effective way.

From the perspective of the students and for the purpose of the interests of the being educated people, Australia’s TAFE colleges fully respect the students' personality and independent choice, maximize the humanized service to build up the system of lifelong education. Vocational education in China started late, developed fast. We should pay attention to the long-term development of professional education when we highlight the benefits of school scales.

Learning from the ideas and practical experiences of Australia’s educational system, especially the TAFE colleges, combining the concrete practice in our country, we should establish vocational education system with our Chinese characteristics, which is the important way of improving people's quality, realizing the great development of education career, and the important guarantee of socialist modernization construction in our country.

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