Sussan Ley moves on to what she wants to talk about – the Coalition’s first education policy this campaign; $260 million to build 12 new technical colleges for students in years 10 to 12.

Ley says tech colleges are a missing link in education:

They are a thing of the past. I think that we had the policy right in the Howard era. It was trashed by Rudd when he came into government, and replaced with something that didn’t work at all. What we want to see is skills back in schools.

We will always reject the notion that if you haven’t made it to university – you haven’t made it in life. And the rates of attendance of students going to university is going up with respect to going to a vocational course.

What that means is that careers advisor, schools, the system, is pushing kids to an ATAR, to a university qualification, that many of them are not suited to. Our Australian technical college will have kids in Year 10, 11 and 12 starting work on the tools, and this is critical – connected to a school-based apprenticeship. So they’ve got an employer.

They’ve got work. They’ve got a pathway. And I visited some of the schools, because they’re still survived the Labor cuts all those years ago and they are doing incredible work. And I want to see excellence in skills. I don’t want to see kids getting in a bus and going to TAFE on Thursday afternoon and struggling to do something called VET in schools. I want to see schools that deliver this in a first class way.

Would it undercut TAFE?

This policy sits alongside TAFE. This is a policy inside schools. But sometimes, we’re pushing our school kids out of the school setting to attend a TAFE course, often some suburbs away. So, this policy is dedicated to Years 10, 11 and 12. As I said, we want more skills – not less. We want high-quality training, whether it is in TAFE for older Australians, or whether it is in school for students.