Interpac Business and Migration Solutions Melbourne Australia

(October 29, 2010)

THE vast vocational education system is ripe for an extensive overhaul.

This is necessary if it is to make a better contribution to improving the skills base of the population and increase productivity and innovation in the workplace.

A Skills Australia paper released last week calls for a rethink on how the sector is funded, managed and delivers training.

It says completion rates are poor, training often poorly targeted and graduate skills too often wasted in unrelated jobs.

"There are very great strengths in the sector, it has a strong backbone, but in terms of meeting the challenges of the future, we ask whether something more radical is required," Skills Australia chief executive Robin Shreeve said.

In 2009, more than 1.7 million students were enrolled in the public vocational sector, with many hundreds of thousands more participating in private and enterprise-based training. But the paper says increased industry contributions and higher fees are necessary to compensate for flagging government investment.

Patrick Coleman, education spokesman for the Business Council of Australia, said the federal government had identified reform of the training sector as a national priority. "They have already taken some steps in that direction, including the establishment of a national regulator. This contributes to that direction," Mr Coleman said.

The paper, Creating a Future Direction for Australian Vocational Education and Training, calls for an outcomes-based funding system that recognises completions and student satisfaction.

It also asks that external moderation of assessments be considered "to ensure a certificate III awarded by one provider is to the same level as a certificate III awarded at another".

It notes such a move might be seen as "another bureaucratic imposition" but says the present regime might be too focused on the process, rather than the outcomes, of training. "Do we have a quality system in VET that is the worst of all worlds; bureaucratic but ineffectual?"

Gavin Moodie, a policy adviser at RMIT University, said reform of the training sector, while long overdue and much needed, would not address skill shortages. "What employers call skill shortages is just a disinclination by employers to pay higher wages," he said.

"And labour market forecasting may be useful in discussing broad trends, but it is a complete failure in addressing the needs of a particular industry."

Leesa Wheelahan, from the University of Melbourne, welcomed the focus on education, not just tightly targeted training for specific jobs.

"It asks whether vocational education and training should be based on a more contemporary concept of vocation that is more related to general further education, giving students capabilities for long-term careers.

"It is a long way from the narrowness of current vocational qualifications that are based on competency-based training, while not necessarily ditching the whole model."

(Source:theAustralian)