Lind, Gavin - Minerals Council of Australia - Mining Skills Organisation Pilot

Response:

•	Vocational education and training is primarily about skilling people for work – either a first job or movement between jobs.  This nexus between jobs and vocational education and training requires strong industry engagement processes if the training products are to provide individual learners with the knowledge, skill and ability to apply these in the context of a workplace. Industry engagement needs to be robust and across the various elements of the skills pipeline. Industry definition of job roles and capabilities and behaviours necessary are critical first steps in a definition process. Industry engagement also needs to be consistent and aligned to business need – too often engagement is spasmodic and not necessarily connected to matters industry sees of value or clearly aligned to business or industry need. Industry engagement is critical to the early identification of changes in technology and its impact on job roles so this can be reflected in training product development and review. By their definition, training products are rearward looking – the challenge is to minimize this gap by having robust industry engagement processes that effectively and transparently link industry and employer job role requirements to vocational education and training system outcomes. The strength of this link will be a significant determinant of successful industry engagement.

•	Industry and employer connection with the vocational education and training system will be governed by a view around the utility of this engagement. If industry and employers do not see a direct and tangible relationship between their input and outcome, the motivation to continue a real connection with the system will be diluted and potentially lost. Complexity and constant change are also factors impacting industry and employer ability to engage. Over time, the system and its products have become increasingly complex and difficult to understand by some in industry, particularly smaller employers that don’t have resourcing available internally to translate matters in a way that can be easily understood. Intermediaries such as Skills Organisations and industry associations have a role to play in responding to this situation. Engaging senior industry leaders, business owners and employers to become more actively involved in vocational education and training matters is key. For this to occur, there needs to be a clear value proposition that relates to business outcomes, whether this be improved attraction and retention, increased productivity or improved safety outcomes or a combination of these. Business will be engaged and connected where it can see value. Skills Organisations and the proposed composition of their boards is a step in the right direction. A further aspect around engagement and connectivity to the system is speed to market. System responses to identified industry need are too variable and don’t provide industry confidence that the system has the flexibility and agility to respond appropriately, particularly in relation to training products. It is not uncommon for changes to training products to take 12 to 18 months or longer to transition through the approval processes and be available for delivery. At this point, training providers need to develop learning resources and assessment tools that can take the same period of time. It is unrealistic to expect industry to wait 2-3 years between identified need and ability of the VET system to deliver a new or revised product. 

•	Industry can and should have a greater direct say in the system quality arrangements.  Greater industry involvement with the regulators either through direct participation in RTO quality processes or in an advisory capacity would give greater confidence that quality arrangements in the sector are robust and deliver the right outcomes. It is recognized this is an additional potential time impost for industry, however if there is a clear relationship between involvement and outcome, industry will see benefit in its participation.

Response:

Yes

Response:

•	Current industry advisory arrangements (Skills Service Organisations) are not delivering outcomes that are required or needed by industry. Consultation mechanisms and participation by industry are 'patchy' resulting in outcomes reflecting the needs and requirements of those responding rather than the broader industry. The reasons for this are complex and will need time to address. Industry trust and confidence in the training product development and review process being able to deliver certainty in outcome in a reasonable time frame has been tested over a period of time. Industry's lack of engagement at a broad level for the mining industry underscores the observation that current arrangements are not meeting industry need or requirements. A new industry engagement model is needed that truly places industry and learners at the centre of the system. Joyce reforms, particularly creation of Skills Organisations, are aimed at addressing this issue - greater industry engagement will deliver a more focused training system with greater alignment between training outcomes and industry need.

•	The Minerals Council of Australia maintains a representative on the Coal Industry Reference Committee (IRC). This IRC is peculiar in the current IRC structure as it is focused around a single commodity and therefore has focus and alignment of representation which offers significant benefits in terms of outcome aligned to industry need.

•	The current training product development and review process does not facilitate collaboration – Skills Service Organisations (SSOs) are incentivised through current funding arrangements to develop product and this has, over time, reinforced silos in the training product development and review arena which has resulted in a relatively low level of collaboration. This has also promoted the emergence of captive arrangements between SSOs and industry associations, a situation that can lead to lessening of engagement and collaborative effort between industry groups.

•	The Skills Organisation model, provides promise, should it be implemented more broadly to address these circumstances. Prioritisation of collaboration between Skills Organisations, either through administrative or funding arrangements has the potential to change behaviour and improve focus on collaboration thereby minimising duplication. Broad based qualifications, should they be implemented as part of the qualifications reform process, by their very nature will drive a different set of relationships between Skills Organisations and industry groups in their development process.

Response:

•	Over a period of time, qualifications have become ‘atomised’ in their development, delivery and funding. This has driven additional complexity and specification in assessment requirements. In addition, a compliance focus has become apparent as VET regulators focus on enhanced quality arrangements to preserve the VET system’s integrity. These factors have conspired to stifle innovation and generally make training providers more focused on meeting their compliance obligations that meeting industry and learner need. This complexity and specificity has also driven qualifications to focus on the minutia at task and sub-task level that often places learning in a very narrow context. This narrow context leads to a lack of transferability of learning and skill between roles forcing learners to go back to square one when moving between jobs or between industries. It has also spawned duplication within the national training product library placing a burden on governments to fund this rapidly expanding training product library, many of which have low or zero enrolments. This draws precious resourcing away from training products focused around future need and newly emerging need resulting from technological change and changing business practices. The notion of introducing broad based qualifications provides a potential basis for addressing these challenges. Broader based qualifications focused around the commonality between job roles within occupational clusters supplemented by stackable skill sets to provide context at individual job roles within and across industries provides an enticing way of rising to these challenges. It also means learners no longer will need to go back to square one when moving between roles and industries. It can also deliver efficiencies in training product development resourcing and lessen the consultation burden on industry and individual employers associated with training product development and review.

•	The current training product development and review process does not facilitate collaboration – Skills Service Organisations (SSOs) are incentivised through current funding arrangements to develop product and this has, over time, reinforced silos in the training product development and review arena which has resulted in a relatively low level of collaboration. This has also promoted the emergence of captive arrangements between SSOs and industry associations, a situation that can lead to lessening of engagement and collaborative effort between industry groups.

•	The Skills Organisation model, provides promise, should it be implemented more broadly to address these circumstances. Prioritisation of collaboration between Skills Organisations, either through administrative or funding arrangements has the potential to change behaviour and improve focus on collaboration thereby minimising duplication. Broad based qualifications, should they be implemented as part of the qualifications reform process, by their very nature will drive a different set of relationships between Skills Organisations and industry groups in their development process.

Response:

•	This question is strongly related to industry engagement and industry. Current qualification design relies upon broad consultation and engagement with industry, employers and learners. It is apparent, the current system qualification development processes are not managing to gain sufficiently broad based engagement resulting in narrowly defined qualifications that do not address industry or learner need. Consultation fatigue is becoming an issue, with industry and employers not able to devote time or resources to processes that have no certainty in addressing need. Achieving a greater level of confidence and trust from industry, employers and learners that qualification design will be better aligned to getting a job or moving between jobs will be a positive step to a positive outcome. This is not an easy task, however. Industry and employers are not homogenous and a different value proposition needs to be developed and offered that address the key issues of trust, confidence, quality and speed to market. Engagement at senior levels has the potential to deliver an authoritative commitment from companies to engagement on qualification development and implementation.

•	Qualification design has become atomised, complex and focused around meeting a diverse range of policy agendas that quite often crowd out technical content.  There is a need to reduce qualification complexity to make training products more accessible and understandable by training providers so that delivery can become more consistent and better aligned to industry need. Moving to broad based qualifications that cover occupational clusters and have applicability across multiple job roles will reduce training product volume, enhance mobility between jobs and industries and, if designed appropriately, will reduce complexity and aid more consistent delivery by training providers. Introduction of occupational standards and training standards will be critical in achieving this. In addition, this approach will make qualifications more robust in a context of rapid technological change. Existing processes rely upon existing training product packaging rules – rules that have become overly complex and not suitable for every circumstance. In the mining sector, this is apparent for hey duty diesel mobile plant mechanics where mechanical, electrical and system skill domains are converging into a single role. Current training product packaging rules do not allow for an industry desired outcome resulting in work-arounds at the individual company level or adoption of less than desirable training programs that are inefficient and often involve training in content that is not appropriate for a mine site environment. The mining industry sees qualifications reform as a mechanism for achieving a more acceptable qualifications methodology.

•	Training standards should provide much greater guidance to training providers on matters relating to delivery of occupational standards – this will reduce gaps between training outcomes and employer need and expectation. Critical to the success of this broad based qualifications process (with stackable skill sets) will be the ability of VET regulators to effectively and efficiently regulate and in doing so, remove the compliance culture that is apparent in training organisations.

Response:

No response provided.