The Commonwealth Government and participating states and territories have signed a Heads of Agreement for Skills Reform.
The Agreement sets out immediate reforms to improve the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector and an approach and priorities for developing a new National Skills Agreement to replace the National Agreement on Skills and Workforce Development.
The priorities in the Agreement are aimed at ensuring the VET system is delivering for students and employers and equipping Australians with the skills they need for emerging jobs.
Participating states and territories also have the opportunity to partner with the Commonwealth to deliver the JobTrainer Fund, which will provide more Australians with access to free, or low cost, training places in areas of identified skills need.
Why this is important
CCA's CEO, Dr Don Perlgut, notes why this is an important development:
This Agreement will do many things, and provides the basis of a new comprehensive national agreement - which the Productivity Commission's Workforce Agreement study currently examines. Although that formal Agreement may not be signed until mid-2021, today's "Heads of Agreement" release provides a pretty good means to understand what will be in it. And remember, this will be the basis of the $500 million new VET funding that the Commonwealth will provide via JobTrainer.
CCA notes with interest the following inclusions in the Agreement (bold type is the Commonwealth):
- Developing and funding nationally accredited micro-credentials and individual skill sets, in addition to full qualifications, and supporting lifelong learning through an integrated tertiary education system.
- Providing stronger support for foundation skills and ensuring access for all Australians with low levels of language, literacy, numeracy and digital literacy.
- Supporting a viable and robust system of public, private and not for profit providers, with contestability in VET markets, to ensure high quality training and student choice.
CCA comments:
- We are pleased to see the phrase "lifelong learning", although we do not believe that the Agreement is using it in the same way that Australian adult and community education (ACE) providers do.
- Foundation skills given a real clear statement of support, a most pleasing development.
- "Contestability" noted (see CCA's notes on opposition to contestability in our recent Productivity Commission submission - PDF), but we also important that they include phrase “not for profit providers”, as some past Commonwealth VET terminology has missed that.
