The Characteristics of Australia’s Technical and Vocational Training System; Lessons for Modification to Iran’s Technical and Vocational Training

systems are always exposed to modification and change. The most important reasons for these modifications are making the education system parallel with the changes in the political, economical, and social environments and in the recent decades haven been causing the speedingup of economical modifications. Therefore modification of Technical and Vocational training system can be considered a main priority for modification of country’s education system. This is an important tool for training and increasing the performance of human resources, for the purpose of making the ground for economical modifications and expansion. One of the countries – in late 1980s – which was in the same conditions as ours – today – (in such ways as dependency on export of raw material, protective economy, facing youths’ unemployment and economical downfall, land space, geographical distribution, and cultural variation) is Australia. This country began economical expansion based on modification of Technical and Vocational Education system in late 1990s. Hence, the country gained valuable achievements by the end of the decade and the beginning of the twenty first century. Therefore, the study of the characteristics of this system can bring with itself lessons for the modification of Technical and Vocational Education in Iran. Three important characteristics exist in the Technical and Vocational Education System, especially in Technical and Complementary Education, which provides for movement and flexibility of the system in responding to industry needs as well as expansion and continual modification. These characteristics include: 1- Organizational independence of Technical and Vocational Education System; 2- Communication with Production and Services sector; and 3- The creation of research centers and communication with universities and scientific centers.

By describing and researching into usage of these characteristics in Iran’s Technical and Vocational Education System, this article has shown that paying attention to it can help Iran’s mentioned educational system. Of course in order to take place, these modifications require the setup of opportunities such as making the university structure research-based, setup of research centers in the field of Technical and Vocational Trainings, as well as organization and expansion of civic and complementary organizations so that with their help we would be able to setup mediator organizations, which would be able to provide for direct relationship between education and production sector. At the end of the article, a set of suggestions have been made for the modification of Technical and Vocational Education System in Iran.