Fleming, Fiona - Food, Beverage and Pharmaceuticals IRC

Response:

The role of the food and beverage industry does need to be strengthened and expanded across the VET system. The role of industry engagement in VET has been increasingly restricted over the last decade, becoming largely transactional with limited influence on strategy.

Industry Reference Committees have limited capacities, being established with volunteers as members and strictly controlled support from SSOs. Yet IRC roles are being directed towards supporting delivery of training, an area outside IRC expertise, and away from skills strategy for industry, the area where IRCs (as currently established) can deliver the greatest benefits. 

The Food and Beverage IRC reported their concern about these directions in the Annual Update of 2020. However recent changes see IRCs move further away from strategic approaches, instead focusing on enrolment numbers and meeting STA stipulations (which are often conflicting and not aligned with national guidelines). They are also being made responsible for metrics over which the IRC has no control (and no ability to collect the data within provided resources). 

The FBP IRC believes that the needs of industry are best served by ensuring it has most of its focus on strategy, rather than focusing on a transactional approach to skills needs. This is a common approach taken throughout FBP businesses, and is the approach the IRC has taken to all of its work. 

Industry engagement is at its best when it provides value to all participants. Currently, industry engagement is being skewed towards meeting the needs of governments, and not the needs of other stakeholders, including industry, learners and training service providers. The original Skills Forecasts developed by IRCs could have been designed to guide and assist industry to develop strategies to plan for skills needs. The current Annual Updates have their major focus on training delivery, with questions on completion rates, low enrolments, training delivery outside of VET and the use of cross-sector units (a very small part of the overall VET system), with encouragement to report without detail and to only use quantitative data. 

Industry planning requires accessible information about the broad environment, but current IRC requirements and resourcing do not allow IRCs to meet these needs. Much of the information being requested from IRCs is information that should be provided to IRCs from existing government and STA sources to assist in strategy development and industry planning. The IRCs are being continually asked to take on responsibilities with limited volunteer time and limited resourcing for SSOs that are properly roles for others. The cost and responsibility shifting in the system is widespread, and the IRCs inability to meet these demands are then used to claim that industry engagement is ineffective and a weak point in the system, rather than the valuable contributor it is. This value would be improved further if greater consideration could be given to the strategic roles of industry across the VET system, and how these roles could best be delivered at national and jurisdictional levels. 

With the current lack of industry involvement at strategic level, it is hardly surprising that steps continue to be taken towards changes in the areas that are valued most by industry, such as workplace experience, efficiency of training and the assessment of competency, which are critical elements of the ultimate outcomes of VET, employment and productivity growth.   

Response:

Yes

Response:

The FBP IRC is well aware of the current industry engagement arrangements and the roles of the stakeholders.

It is not the role of IRCs to "design and develop VET qualifications" other than in the sense of defining and reporting job roles, job functions and industry needs. This seems to be a continuing and ongoing confusion in the VET system: the misnamed Training Packages are occupational standards that describe the roles available and the way that work is done, along with requirements for competency. This information can be and is used in a variety of ways that can add value to industry, including workforce planning, development of position descriptions and guidance for working conditions. Unfortunately, these uses are minimised by the failure to treat this extremely valuable resource as anything other than a vehicle for enrolments, training and RTO funding.  

Not only is the value of the Training Packages minimised by the insistence on using them only in a training context, but they are inefficient for training delivery because of the misalignment between the Standards for Training Packages and the ways they are being used for funding and regulation in the VET sector. 

The IRCs, with the assistance of inadequately resourced SSOs, perform well in the areas of responsibility defined by the IRC Operating Framework which are also supported by funding. These areas are strongly focused on the review and updating of the Industry Skills Standards. The IRC Operating Framework makes it clear that IRCs do not have responsibility or roles in training delivery outside of reviewing and updating the Training Packages and the generic "promotion of VET", yet they are being held accountable for failing to get employers to utilise training (whether that training is actually available or not), non-completions, systemic issues with apprenticeships and traineeships, and the vagaries of RTO enrolments. They are being asked to deal with rapid response requests, bureaucratic processes and broad workforce planning, which is impacting on their primary functions.

Another concern is the increasing use of specified and limited data as being the key factors driving VET. IRCs are not funded to create data sources and industry operates in a competitive environment in which data is protected. The data being used to drive the system is the simplistic data available through government records, such as enrolments, completions, apprenticeship and trainee numbers and numbers of RTOs. This information is then used for decisions that fail to recognise that there are many factors leading to these numbers, particularly relating to Regional, Rural and Remote Australia, thin markets, lack of accessibility to training, RTO viability and labour issues. 

IRCs work well within the responsibilities outlined in the Operating Framework. During the COVID-19 crisis, it became clear that many in industry knew of IRCs and realised their value as an avenue of information to important decision makers. Unfortunately, much of the value of this work was minimised as the decision makers focused on issues such as RTO delivery, mandatory work placements and areas of employment with the highest employment numbers. 

Improvements in industry engagement and representation of industry are dependent on appropriately defining the roles of industry and resourcing bodies to undertake the work required. These roles need to be mainly at a strategic level to be truly effective. Industry bodies, like IRCS, appropriately supported by organisations like current SSOs, which have aided the work of IRCs through specific expertise and by working across a variety of IRCs identifying shared issues, could be more effective. 

Response:

The FBP IRC would question whether the objective "to broaden career pathways for VET graduates" falls within the IRC Operating Framework. Industry requires access to skilled and competent workers, not just to a vast pool of workers. While the IRC acknowledges the importance of encouraging workers to undertake career journeys and to avoid limiting those journeys, the IRC also notes the critical importance of ensuring training allows a worker undertaking a job role to undertake that role competently to ensure worker safety and industry productivity. Failing to provide food and beverage workers with the needed skills to work productively within this industry is not an acceptable outcome for employers. 

The FBP IRC has consistently examined available cross-sector units for inclusion in the FBP Training Package. FBP is a critically important part of the broader food sector and the broader manufacturing sector, so there are opportunities for collaboration, which have been incorporated into the FBP Training Package through importation of units. Unfortunately, cross-sector units have been more difficult to incorporate. Cross-sector units are developed to the same standards as other training products, meaning that each unit of competency equates to a job function. It is difficult to incorporate more than one or two cross-sector units into any qualification given the need to comply with packaging rules and the AQF.  In addition, the timeframe to develop these units is usually longer than in other sectors because they are generally emerging skill areas which are difficult to fully describe. This has led to the FBP IRC delaying proposed work in the FBP training package pending the completion of cross-sector work. 

One initiative that has assisted the IRC to collaborate with other industries is sharing the same SSO as a variety of related industries (although not other manufacturing). The SSO has been able to share information across the IRCs, and this is starting to lead to some joint initiatives, or initiatives where one IRC takes a lead while recognising the role of other IRCs. In the case of the Food and Beverage IRC, one current example is Indigenous foods (bush tucker) which is being considered with three other IRCs, while issues relating to provenance, labelling and traceability are also being looked at (pending analysis of the supply chain cross-sector work). 

Some VET sector stability might be useful to allow for initiatives to reach their full potential for adding value and providing benefits to the system. It was inevitable with the introduction of around 60 IRCs that there would be a focus on updating and reviewing the individual Training packages for the first few years as the IRCs got to know the relationships between industry and VET. As we are starting to expand our horizons and recognise how more value can be added, there is current instability as we are faced with changes driven by multiple reviews and the independent behaviour of STAs that are challenging and, in some respects, undermining national approaches. This is particularly critical when it comes to regulation of the sector and addressing accessibility of training. 

The VET system cannot be all things to all people. The strategy settings for the sector suggest the major role of the VET sector relates to industry, employment and productivity being supported by education and training that takes place in a vocational environment. Unfortunately, these strategy settings are often lost as raw numbers and quantitative data come to dominate directions over and above industry intelligence and long-term outcomes. 

Response:

The current training products are generally fit-for-purpose in meeting the current and future needs of industry and learners, though constant vigilance and review is required to maintain this position. This was strongly evidenced during COVID-19, as the Training Package faced detailed examination about its ability to support transitioning workers and entry-level workers, and found to be suitable in almost all areas. This position has come about as a result of significant work by the IRC, supported by the SSO, and this work continues. However, the process needs to be understood as a process of continuous improvement, not a series of discrete projects. 

The question of whether the needs of learners are effectively considered in the current design process is more difficult. The IRCs are based on industry and have appointed industry representatives. The IRC Operating Framework is based on the role of the IRCs as industry representatives. The needs of learners are considered in that the Training Packages clearly describe the skills they need and what will be required of them. But that does not meet all of the needs of learners. IRCs are not responsible for learning design and training delivery undertaken by RTOs.

A major challenge with qualification and Skill Set design is the lack of clarity around the standards as inconsistently applied by STAs, particularly related to the relationship between Skill Sets and qualifications. Different learners are faced with different needs. The IRC has been looking at types of learners as: school leavers; career developers; career changers; and unemployed. NCVER noted five categories of learners, being: career starters (sub-categories: school leavers without post-school qualifications; unemployed school leavers not in the labour force; and unemployed not in the labour force other); career developers; career changers; compliance/regulation learners; and non-career learners. The IRC does not consider non-career learners in the design of qualifications.

The insistence from one STA that Skill Sets always be incorporated into qualifications removes the ability to design training suitable for career developers, career changers and compliance/regulation learners for whom upskilling through one or more short courses, potentially in a number of different disciplines, may be more appropriate. A career developer may be looking at skills in big data, supply chain, traceability and business administration for their workplace career pathways, but the administration of the system means that this may result in the need to enrol in multiple qualifications (even if a learner did this in spite of the potential expense, there would be a related increase in non-completions). Strict controls limiting the ability to utilise entry requirements and prerequisites means that any short form training and higher level qualifications need to be designed as open to all learners, where training could be designed to provide advanced skills to benefit industry.

Response:

No response provided.