news
Field says
‘ experts’ are clueless
Education and training CEO critical of decisions she says aren’ t practical. By Antonia Maiolo
Claire Field
Peak private college body the Australian Council for Private Education and Training has taken aim at the agency in charge of regulation for training nationwide, saying“ socalled experts” are pushing the tertiary sector to breaking point.
In her speech at the ACPET conference in Adelaide, CEO Claire Field criticised behind-the-scenes‘ experts’ who“ have wielded unparalleled influence, and who I believe are driving profound and largely negative change”.
“ The system has been designed to be driven by‘ experts’, not those with real experience, and the labelling of them as experts encourages them to back their own judgement, rather than engage in genuine consultation and dialogue with those who know the sector best,” Field told attendees.
She said panel after panel of bureaucrats and self-appointed experts were ignoring the advice of industry and instead burdening the sector with needless red tape and changes that rarely work in practice.
On top of Field’ s hit list was the new Australian Vocational Qualifications System put forward by the National Skills Standards Council( NSSC) earlier this year.
She questioned the standards council’ s recommendation to change the current process of registering colleges to a new licensing system.“ I want to formally put on the public record how nonsensical their licensed training organisation proposal is,” she said; however, she acknowledged that this initiative has since been removed from NSSC plans.
Field further questioned the requirement for all licensed training organisations to have accountable education officers( AEO).
Although Field said she sees some merit in the concept of the AEO, she said there were crucial issues related to them, such as the question of how introducing them would lessen the regulatory burden on providers with a proven track record and increase the regulatory scrutiny on those who need it.
She also attacked advice to lift quality in the sector by prescribing a minimum amount of capital behind providers, which she said would shut out many new providers and force many good, longstanding, small providers out of the sector.
“ Anyone who knows anything about VET knows that size is not a de-facto marker for quality; big is not necessarily best, and there are plenty of reasons why [ registered training organisations( RTOs)] choose to remain small or medium enterprises, including many that deliver predominantly on the job,” Field said.
“ Such nonsensical ideas shouldn’ t be proposed by so-called experts in the first place.”
Field said the education and training sector was suffering from a growing disconnect between policy and regulatory design and its implementation.
She also ridiculed the suggestion to change the term RTOs to licensed training organisations – LTOs.“ I’ m surprised that David
Gonski and his panel reviewing the school system didn’ t realise they could also improve the quality of school education in part by changing the name of schools,” she said.
“ We have a system where‘ the experts’ look out from lofty heights and design a‘ robust new regulatory framework’ but don’ t want any discussions on how their clever thinking might work on the ground.
“ One of the things that’ s missing is a focus on how all clever, expert thinking will be operationalised.”
In her speech, Field also criticised the NSSC for halting consultations with the sector until after the election.
An NSSC representative stated that the organisation was unable to comment for this article. n
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