VET
Qualifications la
The length of study required for qualifications varies hugely – and AQF guidelines are being ignored. By Felicity Dunn
The National Skills Standards Council is stoically working towards its directive from COAG to strengthen the VET sector. However, its current review of standards for the regulation of VET providers may prove a little pointless. The elephant in the room is the standards for VET qualifications – the Training Packages – which have been approved with an equally stoic( or stubborn) commitment to ignoring one of the Australian VET sector’ s most significant flaws.
Qualifications accredited in the senior secondary and higher education sectors, and pretty much everywhere else in the world, have a concept of‘ volume of learning,’ for both qualifications and the units / subjects / modules that make them up. By volume of learning, I mean the time involved in learning and being assessed.
But in Australia VET units of competency have no defined volume measure when the qualifications are designed and accredited. It’ s not until after the qualifications are accredited and endorsed that units of competency are allocated nominal hours by states and territories, which are a measure of the teaching time for funding purposes.
Training Package developers, without a concept of the volume of learning for each of the units in their qualifications, use number-of-units as a way to define the minimum completion requirements for their qualifications. For example, a qualification might specify that students must complete eight units from a core group, and another 16 from an elective group.
The problem is that units in VET qualifications can – and should – vary enormously in volume, from two nominal hours( AURV233163A: Remove and install rear-vision mirrors) to 500 hours( HLTAHW517B: Prepare for and manage childbirth). Training Package developers and accrediting authorities, as they don’ t know the volume of each unit, don’ t have anything to add up, and hence don’ t know how big the qualification is that they are accrediting.
Consequently, qualifications of the same type vary enormously in terms of the amount of time it takes a student to complete. Consider diplomas – at the North Melbourne Institute of TAFE, for instance, a diploma in business takes
34 | March 2013