Voices from technical education: Shepparton South Technical School, Victoria, Australia Available to Purchase

At Shepparton in the Murray electorate of Victoria in 2007, the Federal Liberal Member, Sharman Stone, announced that under a returned Coalition Government, Shepparton ‘would get a stand‐alone technical college’. One year earlier, the Victorian Minister for Education, Lynn Kosky claimed that ‘We lost something when technical schools [the ‘techs’] were closed previously. Yes, the facilities were not great but we lost something that was important to young people’. This article explores the development and demise of ‘South Tech’, Shepparton South Technical School, 1966‐86 to identify the ‘something’ that Kosky claimed was lost, and to argue that technical education is essential in a reconstituted system.