A recent article in the AFR has Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott talking about the current situation in the VET sector.
It is a very important point that she makes about the And underlying foundation skills that are so important to our young people; and that if the VET sector continues to be missed, then we as Australians have missed their mark. Jennifer cites a 2012 OECD study which put one in eight Australians in the lowest band of literacy, and one in five in the lowest band of numeracy. This is where we need to help our students, and this is why we have RTOs training people. Well that is why I found myself in the industry many years ago.
So what should be done according to Westacott?
She has a five-point plan for change.
One is to restore VET’s role and status as a national economic priority, which speaks for itself. The second is to clearly define which level of government is responsible for VET. In her view – and contrary to former business council president Tony Shepherd’s recommendation in his recent commission of audit report – it “should not be devolved completely to the states”.
Westacott said that “while competition between the states is important, we cannot take our eye off the main game, which is global competitiveness”.
What we don’t want, she says, is further divergence in the state-based VET systems as we seek to compete against the growing economic power and educational development of Asia.
Skills and capabilities, she warned, will soon be a tradeable as commodities, services and products.
The third part of her prescription is to better integrate VET with the rest of the education system, and with industry.
Her early priority is to improve the ability of the VET system to offer year 12 qualifications to young people who don’t finish school.
“Completing year 12 leads to much higher rates of full-time employment, lower incidence of unemployment, higher wages and higher status jobs,” she said.
Her fourth policy fix is to sort out the structure of VET provision; how public and private providers will compete with each other and how the industry will be regulated.
“For both public and private providers, we need to move to a risk-based model, rather than designing a regulatory system for the few rogue players.
“That will free up the high-quality, established providers to get on with the job,” she said.
The fifth is working with the public providers, TAFE sector.
For more information go to AFR
