Brandt, Clarissa - Timber Queensland

Related consultation
Submission received

Does the role of industry need to be strengthened or expanded across the VET system? Why/why not?

  • What does industry engagement mean to you?
  • How can industry be encouraged to connect with and use the VET system? What does this look like?
  • Are there any roles for industry in the VET system that are not covered or outlined in the case for change?

Response:

The forestry, timber and wood industries have extensive experience in engaging with multiple levels of government. Governments have often worked with industry on matters of strategy and policy development relating to Australia’s forests. The industry and governments effectively utilise bodies such as the Australian Forest Products Association, the Institute of Foresters of Australia and the skills-focused ForestWorks, as well as other national, state-based and local bodies, for engagement purposes.

The 3 IRCs that cover the Forest and Wood Products Training Package are representative of industry in breadth, geographic and sectoral coverage and include many of the same stakeholders that engage with government in areas other than VET. 

A few years ago, the Commonwealth changed the way it engaged with industry about the content of industry skills standards and qualifications. This change led to the establishment of IRCs and SSOs. The industry supported the creation of the Forest Management and Harvesting, Timber Building Solutions and Timber and Wood Products IRCs. This ensured that the VET system would have effective and efficient avenues for industry engagement. 

Instead of these avenues being effectively utilised, these bodies have been limited to providing advice specific to developing industry skills standards and are without influence over a wider range of VET issues the industry has previously experienced. The industry worked with the SSO to ensure that an important role could be continued by ForestWorks, which is the industry organisation developed to focus on supporting industry to progress its skills development goals, including access to, maintenance of industry training packages and assisting industry to navigate and make use of the VET system.  In terms of the relationship between employers and the RTOs willing and with capacity to provide services in these areas, the relationship remains strong and there is regular contact. 

This is an excellent example of proactive industry led engagement but is all too rare across the VET sector. 

Industry is not convinced that VET, with its current policy approach, is delivering on broader government policy settings relating to skills, employment and industry engagement. 

An example of this is the impact that ASQA compliance regulations around auspicing, 3rd party arrangements for RTOs and changes to the TAE qualifications has had on the industry preferred model of using workplace trainers and assessors overseen by an RTO. This model works well for industries that experience thin training markets, are geographically dispersed and have specialised technical skills and specialised equipment that are difficult for RTOs to maintain. 

Industry is excluded from involvement in critical parts of VET relating to access to training, training structures, regulation, funding, assessment of competency and issues relating to thin markets, disadvantaged learners and Regional, Rural and Remote (RRR) Australia. It should be acknowledged that the IRCs are supported by active participation by state ITABs and are working to extend this level of cooperation. 

The industry engagement structures are in place and industry has demonstrated willingness to support and utilise them. These structures are not appropriately utilised or trusted by the AISC and STAs, and not properly resourced to operate in areas outside of the limited field of working on Training Packages. It appears that this may be the result of a lack of alignment between VET system goals, and the goals of industry and governments relating to economic development, skills and employment. VET is only one part of this broader system, and should be responsive to it, not driving it.

Are you aware of the current industry-leadership arrangements led by the Australian Industry and Skills Commission?

Response:

Yes

How effective are the current industry engagement arrangements in VET in meeting your needs?

  • What works well and what could be improved? How could it be improved?
  • How well are you (or your organisation) represented by these arrangements?
  • How well do current arrangements allow collaboration across industry sectors on common workforce and skills needs?

Response:

The forest, timber and wood industries support the current industry-facing engagement structures through the IRCs, the SSO and ForestWorks. Our industries have additional industry engagement channels available at local, state, and national levels to meet any needs beyond those directly related to skills.

What is not working as well is the connection from industry to the AISC and STAs, which seem to lack trust in the established industry bodies and fail to engage at a strategic level. As a result, there is also a lack of engagement with industry to the broader VET system and Skills Ministers. There have been times when other industry bodies have considered the merits of going through their own Ministerial avenues to address the perceived lack of consideration from the AISC and STAs. 

A recent example was the imposed process to delete qualifications and units of competency without properly considering implications for industry, issues relating to VET/Training Package systems and standards and impacts on current projects and efforts by industry bodies to convince RTOs to put training on scope. This occurred at the end of a year dramatically affected by the COVID pandemic, following massive bushfires and long-term drought. To push this project with an exceptionally limited timeframe onto volunteer bodies like the IRCs, who had been working to address the many demands from the AISC and STAs throughout the year, added to the perception that the AISC and STAs have little or no regard for IRCs. 

Current industry engagement channels relating to skills are working well with keeping our industries connected to those with similar concerns, especially the other agricultural industries. Having a common SSO has helped us to identify opportunities for shared skills standards, while working with ForestWorks have helped us retain strong connections with the industries covered by the FWP and PPM Training Packages. 

Unfortunately, these channels are undermined by the focus of oversight bodies on enrolments, completions and similar matters outside of the remit of IRCs. Instead of producing industry skills forecasts that add value to industry, Skills Forecasts and Annual Updates are now required to be submitted using templates that focus on VET and limits provision of industry intelligence on issues more important to skills and productivity than the focus currently held by the AISC. 

What can be done to drive greater collaboration across industries to broaden career pathways for VET graduates and maximise the workforce available to employers?

  • How can workers be equipped with skills that can be applied across different jobs?
  • How can industry support this through the VET system?
  • How can we break down silos and improve collaboration across industry groups?

Response:

Job roles requiring skills covered by the FWP Training package are found in public sector, emergency service, agriculture, arboriculture, conservation and land management sectors, as well as the multiple sectors covered in forest management and harvesting, timber building solutions, timber and wood products (including furnishing and carpentry), and pulp and paper manufacturing. 

Employers also continue the development of skills in the workplace. Through industry development and short course opportunities, utilising formal and informal training avenues.

While the IRCs try to ensure Training Packages meet the various needs of multiple industries, this is difficult to achieve when the industry skills standards developed by the IRCs are called and treated as Training Packages when they are not, they are occupational and skill descriptions, not training products. It is also difficult to achieve when project approval needs to go through long approval processes, especially for industries with low enrolment profiles which results in a higher-level of rejection of proposals.

Two recent examples may help to illustrate the difficulties. The Public Safety IRC recently undertook a project relating to dealing with  tree removal undertaken by emergency services personnel, including examining the FWP unit used for chainsaw skills. This was only one unit within a larger project. Public Safety industry experts provided feedback that the current unit was not fit-for-purpose, so a decision was taken to develop a new unit within the PUA training package. The FMH IRC believed the better solution would be to change the FWP unit to meet PUA needs. This would ensure that there was no duplication, as well as protect enrolment numbers and ensure the unit could be taught by experts who use chainsaws everyday rather than emergency workers qualified in PUA who might only use them rarely. However, the FMH IRC had no AISC authorised or funded project to do the work, and the PUA industry needed updated training. In the interests of industry and public safety, the IRC chose not to take this matter further given the time that this work would have taken. As a result, we now have AISC approved, duplicated units in the system, albeit contextualised to emergency services, but with at least 85% of the skills common.  The old problems continue under the new system because industry structures are not trusted and are still operating under existing training package policy that encourages duplication.  The policy has to change, not the structures.  Contextualization materials can solve a myriad of training package usage issues, but they are still not part of the solution in a policy sense. 

Recently the MEM Training Package was approved, resulting in some units requiring additional prerequisites to be completed, which in one case was 8 units of prerequisites for one unit of competency. The MEM IRC believes that RTOs should be able to map relevant skills in the FWP program to allow learners to undertake the unit without enrolling in all 8 MEM units, however current regulatory settings and TP standards combine to mean this can only be achieved through Recognition of Prior Learning in the MEM units, meaning the learner would fill all optional elective slots and still undertake additional units to complete the qualification. I.e., the prerequisites make the training package rules irrelevant.

The best available solution to this issue appears to be to develop a Unit of Competency in FWP that duplicates the content of the MEM unit within a FWP context. It would be better if there was some way of contextualising the existing training to a FWP context that would meet the needs of regulators and RTOs. This could potentially be achieved through the development of nationally consistent, industry sector specific, assessment and training materials, as well as using the existing products as industry skills standards rather than as training packages. The IRCs understand why the MEM IRC has designed the Training Package to meet their industry needs, but these are not the same as other industry needs that utilise the same or similar skills. A person working on a high-rise building needs a different level of skills using a rivet gun that a furniture maker.  

Are qualifications fit-for-purpose in meeting the needs of industry and learners now and into the future? Why/why not?

  • Are the different needs of industry and learners effectively considered in designing qualifications in the current system? What works well and why?
  • Are there issues or challenges with the way qualifications are currently designed? What are they and what could be done to address these?

Response:

Most of the FWP Training Package has qualifications that are fit-for-purpose but are not being utilised through formal enrolments in the VET system. The training products are not assisting industry to attract industry entrants and address skills shortages as intended. While it is unlikely that the responsibility for these outcomes sit with the training package content, it is important to recognise these outcomes and work to address them.

In keeping with this approach, the IRCs are currently overseeing projects related to the entry-level and higher-level qualifications, to see if additional efficiencies can be incorporated, including the potential for more short-form training.

This work is hampered by the limited roles that IRCs have in the development of Training Packages, the need to meet the complex development and endorsement requirements and the inability to create consistent assessment and training products to support established industry skills standards 

The industry skills standards are utilised by industry to support in-house and informal external training. The way that the industry skills standards are used by industry should provide a model for how they could be used within the VET system. Instead, the VET system seeks to create a low risk, regulated and institutionalised volume training environment that is not working for niche focused RTOs or industry. 

The role of the IRCs is not to design qualifications and units of competency for delivery by RTOs. It is to define the industry skills standards on which competency should be assessed. As a result, the work of the IRCs does not take into account learner needs. Learner needs relate to training delivery, not to meeting industry skills standards. There are no learners on IRCs and nor should there be if the roles of IRCs are to be limited to current roles relating to industry skills standards. 

Are there any further issues in relation to improving industry engagement in the VET sector that you would like to provide feedback on?

Response:

No response provided.