Curry, Ian - Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union

Response:

The role of industry needs to be both strengthened and expanded. It must also be restored to a role that represents actual leadership of the VET system. 

The current model is hamstrung and smothered by the worst weaknesses of federation. The role the states & territories, and in particular the SSON, play in micromanaging every aspect of the system, has turned the system into a dysfunctional contest between the aspirations of industry to set high quality occupational standards and jurisdictions defending 'their' training systems.

Despite the rhetoric of industry leadership, it appears that every single meaningful decision that materially affects VET is ultimately controlled by states and territories.

The unrelenting tinkering with Training Package design standards, the incoherence of the mind numbing processes that IRC's and SSO's must go through just to commence work on updating training products (with each step forensically examined by the jurisdictions), the very structures that resulted in over 65 IRC's serviced by a diverse set of SSO's, let alone the processes required to obtain endorsement of redeveloped training products have all combined to diminish and fragment industry's ability to engage with and lead the system. 

Industry is struggling to have its voice heard over that of the training club. Industry is calling for people with the skills required in occupations and the training club is debating the minutiae of micro-credentials, skill sets and locally accredited short courses that in many cases blatantly duplicate training package products but are not subject to any of the rigour that jurisdictions insist be applied to training packages.

Industry must be allowed to establish the occupational standards that best reflect the requirements of the industry. The training system should thereafter be charged with responsibility for training people to meet those standards. The two processes have become blurred and confused as governments skew the system with funding priorities and signalling its preferred solutions ie micro-credentials, skill sets and locally accredited courses.

The fact that the review commissioned by the AISC found "the process for qualification development is overly complex and bureaucratic, lacked transparency and is hard to engage with" came as news to no one. The endorsement process and the role of the jurisdictions would benefit from a similar review.

The system is tightly focussed on enrolments, funding, government policy priorities and regulating inputs.

More attention needs to be paid to outcomes. ie do graduates of the vet system have the competency required for the occupation their training was intended to give them.

The VET system suffers from the lack of a clear and simply stated purpose. The Productivity Commission Report on Government Services 2020 reported that, despite the fact 85.1% of people engage with the VET system ‘for employment related reasons’, only 17.8% are employed at a higher skill level after training.  

If the purpose of our VET system is vocational, we need to refocus our attention away from 'training' and onto occupational competency to the standard established by industry for the respective occupations.

Response:

Yes

Response:

The AMWU has an interest in the operations of at least 13 IRC's serviced by 3 SSO's. All of them are constrained by what the system permits them to do. Most of the interactions that industry has are predetermined by governments and the AISC.

The ability of IRC's to meaningfully engage in these structures is limited. Industry Skills Forecasts, workplans, proposed schedules of work, cases for change, activity orders and the constant dead hand of jurisdictional oversight severely curtail the ability of industry people, often appointed as individuals with limited discretionary resources, to drive the work they need to pursue.

Government priorities like skill sets, micro-credentials, digitalisation, cross sector projects, low and no enrolment units and qualifications, cyber security etc etc are the focus of SSO's through their contractual obligations with the Commonwealth which further constrains the ability to progress important work.

The structures within which IRC's operate act to constrain collaboration and to encourage proliferation and duplication, often resulting in overspecialisation and a diminution in the transferability of competency. There is limited ability to coordinate the important work of rationalising the extraordinary amount of duplication and incoherence in both units of competency and in qualifications.  

Response:

The current structure and tight focus of IRC's on individual training packages rather than on structures that reflect the occupational application of skills have encouraged narrow specification of required skills and have led to duplication, over-specialisation and fragmentation of transferable skills, and was always going to.

The system has deliberately turned away from the relationship between training packages and the occupations that they exist to define skill standards for in pursuit of a mythical a training market that is itself compromised by the rapidly changing priorities of governments and the poor behaviour of some training providers.

The interests of industry and the workers that comprise industry must be preferenced over politics and the interests of states and territories.

A proper focus on occupational standards is required, free from the micromanagement that is currently smothering the system. The design of learning methodologies cannot be permitted to distract industry from the specification of the standard required for effective performance in the workplace. There is a role for curriculum, but not at the expense of the occupational standard. They cannot be combined in the same product. And the occupational standard must take precedence.

Response:

Qualifications and other training products need to be designed to accurately reflect the requirements for skills in work. The nature and extent of work should define the standard, not academic notions of educational qualifications. Those training products that reflect the requirements for skills in work will not automatically fit the definitions of an arbitrary qualifications framework or training package development standards.

Whilst ever we obsess about designing qualifications over occupational standards, we will continue to create products that are not fit for the purpose that industry seeks to apply them.

Training is not the only purpose to which industry puts competency standards and other so-called training products.

industry should determine the occupational standards and the training system should create learning programs that meet those standards. High quality National industry Framework Curriculum, designed to produce graduates that meet the occupational standard, and endorsed by industry, may not fit the ideology of the (failing) training market, but it is what is needed to restore confidence in the training system.

Response:

No response provided.