About a year back, it was stated VET’s ‘big challenge in 2024 was to fix the long-term wobbly third leg’, specifically, effective development and faster delivery of contemporary training products that best integrate industry skills priorities with quality training and educational content.
One year on, the scorecard shows solid progress in rebuilding the required national policy and tools.
Yet there is scant evidence that demonstrates practical outcomes in refreshing the current or constructing new national VET qualifications, but this should change in 2025. What’s now to do?
The opportunity and priority for 2025 is national commitment by leading stakeholders to work together and apply loads of cooperative, collaborative glue to help fix the wobbles. Why so?
Progress made in 2024
Late in 2024, the Skills Ministers’ Communique confirmed agreement on the next stage of VET qualification reform, being a new ‘qualification-first’ approach to VET qualifications design.
This decision was underpinned by the report of the VET Qualification Reform Group (QRG) advising that VET qualifications span many needs; those for specific occupations and task-defined; those for wider industry purpose suited to multiple occupations within one or related industries; and those that are ubiquitous, transferable vocational skills spanning all industries.
Current qualification design was assessed as being too excessive in its ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, so a more purpose-clear ‘qualification first’ approach has been proposed, retaining units of competency (UoC) as the ‘organising units of learning’, covering the traditional form of competency definition as well as a proposed ‘application of skills and knowledge’ approach.
The newly published (62 page) Training Package (TP) Organising Framework (TPOF) sets out seven qualification development principles, plus product and process requirements. It will become operable only in July 2025, superseding the current three standards/policies. The Communique notes that the revised TPOF will ‘give guidance to all key participants in the qualification design process, especially JSCs’, with new templates becoming available for use by developers by 1 July 2025.
There are other areas of solid progress. During 2024, the 10 Jobs and Skills Councils (JSCs) got beyond mere start up to be established and operationally active, as exampled by their industry engagement, industry-specific workforce plans and demonstration projects.
Finally, a much-needed refresh and upgrade of the National Training Register was launched, a primary source of information on providers and qualifications, as well as an improved online resource for students to swiftly get to grips with available courses. All good progress.
From kick off by Ministers in mid-2020, to meandering national consulting to no practical end point, to then revival and a ‘pulling-together’ by the independent expert QRG, it has taken 5 years to only now reach the start point of an uncertain implementation.
Much has happened in 5 years, such as the impact of AI, the National Skills Agreement and the Higher Education Accord. And Australia’s national labour productivity (GDP per hours worked) has declined even further. Policy incapability and delay in setting reforms that could improve national workplace skills has an unquantifiable impact on employers, industry and training providers.
Forward looking – analysis and critique
It’s more constructive to look forward in current and future context. Think qualifications reform in the wider context of e.g. TAFE Centres of Excellence (TAFE CoE), tertiary system ‘harmonisation’ and unified education and training sectors, and data transparency. It’s all connected. So, to make positive progress, here are the cooperative/collaborative priorities for key actors and stakeholders.
Trialling of new approaches to qualifications reform – making friends with new ideas
The agreed Ministerial reform is directed at ‘providing choice to qualification developers when designing qualifications…to either describe job functions and (detail) tasks, or to describe the knowledge and skills outcomes obtained from training to support greater adaptability’. The latter frames qualifications on ‘application of skills and knowledge’, consistent with the current AQF.
One view is that such a proposal is a shamozzle; the alternate is it’s evolutionary, reflecting differing industry-led views and is not a junking of past virtues and practice of the embedded TP-UoC regime. Both approaches can work together in different emphasis and industry circumstance to like quality and outcome. The ‘T-shaped graduate’ concept well expresses this distinction between equally valued deep technical skills and cross cutting industry-wide employability and enabling skills.
[Physics analogy: ‘what’s light made up of’? It’s best understood as both particles (photon bundles) and having ‘wave-like’ properties, i.e. wave-particle duality. Photons are neither discreet “particles” (think – UoC) nor “waves” (think skills) but exhibit properties of both, depending on how they are observed and measured. And! It is the quality of light outcomes that counts – not mechanics dogma].
Collaboration between all key players – industry, unions, providers and JSCs
Don’t assume the collaboration-needle across stakeholders is currently zero, it’s not. Over the past year JSCs have toiled to engage with all other key players. But boiled down to core purpose, the JSCs’ mission[1] is to collaboratively create and sustain contemporary VET qualifications that are effective and valued, unifying the interests of both their industry partners and training providers.
As stated, one year back, JSCs could not get their mission out of 1st gear without having explicit design details of nationally agreed Training Package Qualifications (TP-Q) reform. Most have spent some 18 months diligently working towards the now imminent new design tools.
So, 2025 will kick off qualification renewal or makeover, ideally bringing all best interest to the task. JSCs will in May 2025 list priority training product development plans from their qualification portfolios, a national schedule will be complied by July with the potential of new qualifications ready for use in 2026. A revived VET quals system should start to roll, three years after the AISC closed.
Now entering an uncertain implementation phase, what does future national success look like?
From the provider perspective: consultation and where needed ‘collaboration of experts’ in managing the ‘hand-over’ zone between new/revised qualification requirements, and providers’ own judgments about pedagogical best practice and regulatory self-assurance; they want engaged change as they don’t want a downstream deluge of new costs and impositions; and they want early notice of churn in versions (large providers are just closing out transition extensions[2] from the final tsunami of the old AISC regime). Given the wide range in provider size and political clout, the mid-and-smaller private RTOs also want, and deserve, to be heard and not run over.
From an industry perspective: Collaboration allows rapid response to identified/validated skills and training needs that reflect work-face reality. Industry wants speed, impact and scale in deploying new skills and training supporting existing staff or new hires, and care less in many instances for structure or formalities of qualifications. Industry should prioritise their demands, conscious of public funding and provider limits. They will step up in direct investment in accredited and non-accredited skills, more prepared to collaborate with providers where industry-tailored training courses ‘excel’.
From a system perspective: A coordinated system with collaborative stakeholders; a system that measures the uptake and utility of all qualifications, strips out those qualifications that have limited purpose or duplication; has trusted and swift governance via the qualification Assurance Body; and encourages, where needed, swift ‘fast-track’ novel developments and deployments at scale.
From the JSCs’ perspective: Recognition as the ‘go-to’ collaboration link between industry and providers as an authoritative source of industry-innovation-training needs. Recognition that JSCs are like by name but have complex overlapping mandates and face many different industry-specific issues. Invigorated collaboration across JSCs avoids duplication of qualification content, and new cross-sectoral integrated qualifications are sponsored by JSCs. JSCs have license to independently innovate and operate in trust without unnecessary contract shadow management.
Collaboration between and across all ‘qualification developers’
JSCs don’t have sole rights as VET qualification developers. The Ministers’ Communique makes this clear by referring to JSCs and other qualification developers (without specification). The potential explanation is made here by categories of the ‘old’, the ‘exception’ and the ‘new’.
The ‘old’ is the presumed retention of the Victorian and Western Australian authorities to establish accredited courses for their local use per their 2011 historic agreement.
The ‘exception’ is where RTOs use the existing ASQA-approved course accreditation that has two critical upfront barriers for those proposing courses: ‘non-duplication of training package content’ and ‘being of proven industry need’. ASQA is the decision maker.
The ‘new’ is the Ministerial announcement that ‘the government will scope and pilot ASQA delegating its course accreditation function to selected TAFEs in the coming 12 months’. This institutional privilege and wider ambition is to be exercised initially to self-accredit Diplomas and Advanced Diplomas in priority industries through TAFE CoEs.
Given CoEs are national by design this seemingly gives the unique potential for nationally used/licensed courses being authorised via heads of institution sign-off. Further future privilege may be TEQSA facilitating TAFEs to self-accredit some higher education courses. It is unclear whether the Commonwealth would extent HELP to any such TAFE self-accredited courses.
There is also increasingly the non-accredited route, where providers, industry players and others offer uncertain quality ‘own-branded’ courses in the guise of e.g. short courses/micro-credentials.
Whilst the different routes above will be unlikely to significantly change the current dominance of TP courses used across the VET sector[3], they do raise multiple questions of cooperation and collaboration – or not.
This includes: common (mandated/optional) use of qualification design tools; cross coordination of authorisations (ASQA/TP Assurance Body); the (mandatory/optional) role of JSCs in industry advice; the risk of duplication/conflict where TAFE-CoE qualifications impact in industry areas coincident with JSC’s industry remit; and more broadly impacts on those JSCs whose remit covers industries where there is dominant and increasing penetration of university-led HE qualifications (at AQF 5-7) in, for example, health, caring, design, finance, tech, business, engineering. Such complexity already impacts current boundaries and future ‘harmonisation’ of HE/VET sectors.
Government collaboration in public disclosure of the VET qualification ‘pipeline’
The last paving stone in implementation must be laid by governments. There should be an annual public summary report[4] of reform implementation, covering new or refreshed examples, then uptake, utility and impact of VET qualifications[5], in both accredited and non-accredited courses, noting sources of production are beyond just JSCs (see above).
Accountable cooperative federalism applies to all, including JSCs and any department managing them. The qualifications ‘pipeline’ needs to be transparent to industry, unions, providers and governments. States are majority funders of direct VET training delivery. They are obliged and overwhelmingly buy TPs quals produced by entities controlled and contracted by the Australian Government. In the past State and Territory Ministers have had insufficient insight and influence over training products they must ‘buy’ for VET delivery, collectively expending some $4bn in 2023.
The public investment in JSCs is ~$104m in 2023/24. Transparency will help build greater trust, commitment and support for the policy and for JSCs, across industry, unions and providers. Public disclosure will highlight what’s working, what’s not and will help prompt fixing, providing quality improvement feedback loops on the new (dual-track) ‘qualifications-first’ approach. It’s not a witch hunt on underperformance, rather a means to build greater maturity of understanding that, like qualifications, different industry sectors are also not ‘one size fits all’ and that the JSCs face many differing challenges particular to their industries.
The risk, as in the past, is that information vacuums get filled with misinformation, and governments don’t publish but belatedly acknowledge qualifications are riddled with duplications and scattered with unused qualifications created under decade-long contracts one government managed.
Lastly it will be bizarre if so much policy reverence and investment is given to published industry training plans as being pivotal to training products[6], but the next-actions-step, being the end-user uptake, utility and impact of national training qualifications is left effectively blank to stakeholders. The Department has opportunity to step over any risk averse shadow and distinguish unambiguously what is high public interest and what minimally resides in JSC contract commercial-in-confidence.
In closure
Why stick to a glib ‘glue’ metaphor in referring to much overused and oft underwhelming pleas to be ‘cooperative, collaborative’. Because glue here stands for a change-culture, cynics desist, can-do attitude and collective determination. The nation needs a fix and to make friends with new ideas; we can’t risk people going off to their own sheds with the new tools to work independently. This is not just a test of VET’s cooperative federalism, it’s essential to both national workplace productivity and optimising individual opportunity.
[1] JSC as entities are specific to the VET sector and not replicated in Australia’s HE sector
[2] As of Jan 25 ASQA shows 117 qual transition extensions stretching to June 26
[3] In 2023, about 11% of VET program enrolments were assigned to accredited quals/courses
[4] JSCs at present seem not (to be required) to provide annual public reports like AQSA, TEQSA and NCVER
[5] To examine whether or not (~1,200 current) VET qualifications (plus skills sets) are used and have impact, not about student enrolment numbers.
