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Skills to pay the bills
Ensuring we provide the skills we need for the future we want .
By Andrew Dettmer and Ian Curry
The future we want will not fall from the sky . Like any period of great challenge that we have had to confront , it will take careful planning , sound strategy , leadership and a clear sense of purpose if we are to successfully navigate the post COVID-19 recovery and grasp the opportunities to reskill Australian workers .
Properly done , increasing the nature , latitude and intensity of our skills and workforce capability will win that future .
There is a risk that the major reforms to VET being contemplated now will go the way of so many others and degenerate into a debate about the mechanics of training , how we regulate it and fund it , rather than building a shared national understanding about what the purpose of vocational education and training is .
The complexity of the current social and economic environment means that we must get VET right . It is as important as any decision on infrastructure , tax reform and the environment .
What problem are we trying to solve ? The most succinct description of the problem with VET is illustrated by a Productivity Commission finding that 85.1 % of people engage with the VET system ‘ for employment related reasons ’, yet only 17.8 % are employed at a higher skill level after training . 1
This sad fact indicates that our VET system , after almost a decade of ‘ reform ’ is still
not producing higher skilled employment outcomes for most students and workers .
The training system is struggling to produce workers with the skills the economy needs . Other problems include :
• The system is trying to serve too many masters . There is a so called ‘ national ’ training system whose coherence is undermined by eight separate State and Territory VET systems all with their own arrangements .
• There is a lack of certainty amongst employers , students and the community about what the VET system is producing . It is under increasing pressure to cater for flexibility and specialisation designed specifically to meet the narrow interests of individual employers rather than the industry .
• We have the conundrum of strong support for the mechanism of Training Contracts while confidence in the outcomes of current traineeships , trade apprenticeships and technical cadetships is diminishing
• The number of people who complete their VET study continues to stagnate .
• Industry and students lack confidence that their engagement with the VET sector will produce the outcomes they seek .
• Employers struggle to understand the capability they can expect from people holding vocational qualifications .
• The long term reduction in VET ’ s share of education funding means there is a race to the bottom on cost and quality led by for-profit RTOs that is forcing high quality public TAFE and not-for-profit industry providers to join the race .
• Students and employers have little chance of becoming the informed and demanding consumers our VET system desperately needs in the current climate .
Can we learn from the past ? The National Training Reform Agenda of the late 1980s was a period of equally profound change following the Hawke / Keating economic reforms of the mid- 1980s . The agenda had a clear purpose and a detailed set of objectives eg :
• industry ’ s desire to use vocational skills in order to increase flexibility , mobility , productivity and competitiveness in the economy
• a need for VET to focus on generic as well as technical skills
• national recognition arrangements for vocational qualifications and skills
• skills development and recognition that crosses occupational boundaries
• recognition of the importance of reforms to management education and training to the success of VET reform
• skills defined through industry ownership of the process and the direct involvement of the workplace
• the need to ensure VET reform includes ‘ semi-skilled ’ and ‘ unskilled ’ employees
• openness of the training system to public scrutiny in terms of content , quality and delivery methodology . 2 The union movement strongly supported the above changes and set a policy for :
• The establishment of one nationally consistent training system based on competence
• Competence defined by skill standards developed by the industry parties
• Promotion of key skills and not narrow specialisation
• Classifications linked to qualifications and wages
• Recognition of prior learning based on industry skill standards . Back then , as it is now , something had to give . The industry partners buried their natural animosity and along with governments drove fundamental change in the industrial relations landscape in the hope that industry would capitalise on the opportunities to retool , and to invest in skills and capability .
Our proposition Defining the purpose of VET No national reform can effectively address the challenges we face without first articulating a clear and unambiguous statement of purpose for the system .
We propose that the purpose of the system be stated as follows .
“ The primary purpose of the VET system is the production of skilled and
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