What's a Trade Technical School?

Heyo I recently heard someone talk about Trade Technical schools, now English is pretty much like a second native language to me but when I first heard this I wasn't quite sure what it meant, I think I have a vague idea of what it means but I'm not quite sure, so if anyone could explain what a Trade Technical School is it would be much appreciated

In Australia we have High School (years 7-12) then you'd go to University/College.

If you prefer to have a trade or technical degree we have specialist college type schools that focus on those qualifications. Usually we'd just call it 'Tech' school or 'trade' school.

The schools have things like heavy engineering lathe's, construction machinery, cranes and major industrial plant equipment, along with industrial chemical labs, gas and electricity services, laser cutting etc all as the class room so you learn on them to get your academic qualifications.

So you'd leave high school when you're about 16 years old and work as an apprentice, attend trade school 2-3 days a week to learn all the rules and techniques, then 2 days or so on the job learning how to apply the knowledge in a real life industrial setting. Your boss on the job would also give you a grade on the quality of your work on site.

You also get paid a trainees wage for the work you do while at trade/tech school, the pay rate goes up every year you pass and become more skilled. Eventually reaching full pay when you graduate.


The Tech side is more industrial chemicals and things like mass production robots, automated factory assembly lines, integrated stock control etc all on fairly large scale type industrial projects.

You'd spend anywhere from 1 -4 years doing the standard coursework and upgrade skills with short courses of 3-6 months as you develop your career over the years.

So how does it work in Iceland ?

Thanks for explaining that I'm not sure we have this in Iceland, we start elementary/primary school at 6 and graduate at 16, then we can choose to either go to high-school/college or not (most people do), and that takes about 4 years, most of the people who graduate usually go to a college/university which also takes some amount of time (I wouldn't really know I'm still at the high-school/college level ).

Apart from this process I don't know about any other method to get an education/degree around here, there are a few places where you can take a course in a language or 'MAYBE' some type of industrial course, but very few.

We also have one high-school/college where you can get your degree in 2 years instead of the usual 4 but I think there's only the one. Iceland's population is so small (only about 300.000 people) and so It's really hard to get anything new or change something around here, new ideas don't usually last here. :/

The schools are a relic from the industrial revolution in the UK. They were first called Mechanics Institutes, mainly lending libraries for adult working men to upgrade their skills as the industrial world developed in the 19th cent. Todays Adult Education/ night classes basically.

We still have a few of these Mechanics Institute halls around Melbourne. As well as a library mostly of technical based books, they also had lectures and classes for new techniques, working with steam engines for instance then when electricity came in.

They became 'tech schools' by the 1950's, boys only high schools teaching trades etc. But it was a big choice for 10-11 year old primary school kids to choose if you wanted to go to University or be a plumber, and it was often a bored careers teacher who chose your life path, parents taking their recommendation.

Tech schools were phased out in Melbourne by the 1990's with most colleges and Uni's providing the tech training now.

The most famous old Mechanics institute in Melbourne is Swinburne Institute of Technology. It had a very good arts dept with the best film school in town for a generation.

Very often the tech schools had more freedom to change with the technology. So when electronics and digital equipment became big in the 1980's, it was the tech based schools who taught the computer courses, the other Universities were locked in the past.

Rusden was another tech/arts based college which had the best dance dept in the country. The other dance colleges focused on classical ballet, where Rusden trained the first generation of shufflers, who seriously partied hard when school was out.