Australian Technical Colleges

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Australian Technical Colleges (ATCs) are a class of Australian senior secondary school funded by the Australian federal government. They deliver vocational education courses to Year 11 and 12 students, predominantly 16-18 year olds. Some colleges have a single campus, while others have multiple campuses.

According to the Australian constitution, secondary and vocational education is the responsibility of the state and territory governments. These colleges' federal funding is thus unusual for this reason alone.

In 2005 the federal government choose the area these schools were to be established in, then advertised for tenders. Some successful tenderers were state or territory governments, others were church groups, others were for-profit companies. Some were combinations of these. Thus some resulting ATCs were government schools, while others are private schools that are predominantly government funded, and at least one exists as a campus-within-a-campus at a state school and a church school. Such a mixed sectoral body of schools had not existed in Australia before, nor had any government founded a private school. Both these firsts also make the colleges unusual.

Five of these colleges opened in 2006, while twenty are planned to open in 2007 and 2008 [1].