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New NCVER chief steps into changing times
Funding changes, role of industry in focus as Rod Camm takes the helm of the VET researcher. By Dallas Bastian
The National Centre for Vocational Education Research( NCVER) will navigate upcoming reforms and system renewals under the leadership of new managing director Rod Camm.
The former CEO of Skills Queensland had extensive knowledge of NCVER prior to commencing the role and was attracted to the rapidly changing environment in which it operates. He saw the position as an opportunity to ensure the organisation was able to make a real difference.
Camm brings to the job his experience as associate directorgeneral of the Queensland Department of Education and Training and CEO of Construction Skills Queensland. He said his role at NCVER is to ensure that the centre is positioned so there’ s real evidence available to help decision-makers – such as government, industry and both TAFE and private training providers – come to conclusions.
The future plan for NCVER, he says, is to do“ much smaller, sharper, punchier pieces of work” and to synthesise their own research with international efforts.
It’ s an exciting time to head the organisation, he says.“ The sector is seeing some of the biggest changes to its funding arrangements that it’ s ever seen.”
With entitlement systems being designed at jurisdictional and state and territory levels, and the introduction of contestability, one of the opportunities for NCVER is to ensure its work informs these developments.
Another focus is based on VET’ s recent engagement with the resources boom, where the system had trouble producing enough skilled workers. The new managing director said this was an area where lessons could be learned and strategies should be implemented for the future.
The role of industry in the marketplace is another point of interest. There are questions to be asked surrounding the best way for industry to influence market outcomes.“ Then there’ s the whole other aspect around training providers themselves and how we quality assure the system and work with the various authorities to ensure that our qualifications have integrity,” Camm said.“ We will come out with a couple of really sharply focused discussion papers on those topics.”
A real challenge when reforming the sector is to ensure it is constantly made simpler, more transparent and easier to navigate, he said, adding that the government’ s commitment to reducing red tape is relevant to VET.
“ How do we maximise the amount of information that’ s out there for consumers when they’ re trying to navigate the system? There’ s also the challenge around what skilled strategies work in a boom versus when the economy’ s a bit slower.”
Future proofing will be another focus and strategies will be needed for training more people or having more work-based training when relevant.
A point of excitement will be changes to the sector’ s system of capturing data for the total VET effort.“ At the moment, the system only collects data that’ s publicly funded … so from next year we start transitioning to capturing all of that effort and we will get a complete picture of the country’ s qualifications profile.” At the moment, there is a question mark over how big the private sector is. He said understanding this better would help inform policy.
NCVER plans to host forums with industry
Rod Camm
and training providers to discuss what the future looks like for VET and how the organisation can be positioned to deliver the most.
“ We are very much focused on identifying the key policy challenges that are out there,” Camm said.“ We’ re going to gear our systems to make sure we’ re able to do research and data analysis to produce reports that add maximum value to both government and stakeholders.”
The outlook for the sector is positive, he said, despite challenges such as a marginal decline in apprenticeships. For example, he said traineeship numbers, whilst having dropped significantly in the last year, are trending up once more and student numbers are still growing, as are completion rates.
“ In that sense, we’ re coming off a nice solid platform,” he said.“ The question for us all is how can we make sure we keep improving the sector?” n
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