VET & TAFE
campusreview. com. au
Could the next year be one of more scandals and controversies in the sector? Look verrrrrrrrrrrrry closely and see.
By John Mitchell
Gaze into the future
Let’ s have some fun by staring into a crystal ball to see what might happen in the VET sector over the next 12 months, to mid-2016.
Putting on seer’ s glasses, the first prediction is that various legal actions in 2015 regarding Vocation Ltd might reveal new scandals about loopholes in VET regulation and funding programs. In its self-defence, Vocation might argue that it was lulled into a sense of complacency by regulators who had not given its subsidiaries a torrid time until mid-2014. The company might yet have an impact on the national sector, but not the type it originally intended; the Vocation disaster might inadvertently expose more flaws in the system.
An associated prediction is that, given the pressure placed on the national, Victorian and Western Australian regulators by cases such as Vocation’ s, the national regulator, the Australian Skills Quality Authority( ASQA), might use the massive injection of extra funds it received from the Commonwealth Government to close down many more training providers in 2015 – 16. These closures will be accompanied by thousands more students being sent a letter notifying them their qualifications have been rescinded because their training providers delivered inadequate services.
Some of these training providers might use the same self-defence suggested above for Vocation: how is it that regulators were gentle with us last year and are now closing us down? This could lead to a ballooning of legal action against ASQA, distracting its senior staff and reducing its capacity for chasing down other rogue operators.
Social media backlash Meanwhile, the growing number of students sent a letter to be told they had wasted their time acquiring a qualification from a now discredited training provider might inspire some bottom-up reaction, such as a social media campaign of outrage to name and shame not only the owners of these discredited providers but also the government officials and politicians who condoned or actively promoted any of these providers.
Politicians and bureaucrats, fearing more revelations about shonky practices of training providers, might ban themselves from accepting invitations to Christmas
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