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Would highly recommend people read @jamiljivani's excellent and moving first hand account of how Ontario's academic/applied streaming system creates barriers that hurt underprivileged students the most, like Jamil, and why it needed to go. A few thoughts: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jamil-jivani-ontarios-old-streaming-policy-ruined-the-chances-of-boys-like-me/wcm/a77f9ddd-a3a2-44a5-a06a-d4fd9aaa6298/
My view is that the reason academic/applied streaming is so bad is because it's a brutal halfway house. The applied stream doesn't actually do good vocational training, it is a self-selecting divider between the "smart" and "dumb" kids, and it closes doors to students too early.
But what I think would be better is a vocational streaming model. I tweeted a few days ago that too many people go to university, and Ontario's education system is in many ways structured to get as many students as possible into universities, and creates a have/have not system.
The applied stream doesn't do that, it just separates out the not going to university kids and basically leaves them behind by locking these students in. It isn't vocational education. What I think would be preferable is something along the lines of a German, or CEGEP model.
The goal of a vocational model like this, keeping students in secondary education a year longer in these vocational finishing schools would be to massively reduce the number of kids who end up going to university and help provide actual vocational training for kids.
This would graudally break down the has a degree/doesn't have a degree classism that is a real problem, and it wouldn't close doors to non-university students because the vocational training would provide real, useful, good education and not just a professional credential.
The ultimate goal should be to build a population and workforce that is highly skilled and trained, not just credentialed and overeducated. If you had a vocational model like this employers wouldn't require degrees for jobs that don't need them, they'd just want skilled workers.
