Opportunity to innovate

Can public secondary schools teach VET providers anything about innovation, asks John Mitchell.

In the minds of many VET providers, innovation in relation to student engagement is not a top priority at the moment. Providers are preoccupied with several new policy developments, such as the commencement of market reforms in Victoria, the forthcoming move to a tertiary sector and the advent of a single quality regulator for both VET and higher education. In this highly charged policy environment, innovation is usually about how to be more commercially savvy. Or how can student satisfaction ratings be raised to satisfy the quality auditors, not how can the learning needs of students at risk...