GTOs not imperialistic enough

Group training has to think big, according to John Buchanan. The group training model should be extended beyond trade apprenticeships to professions such as engineering and medicine, an industrial relations expert told last week’s Group Training national conference in Adelaide. Dr John Buchanan, director of the Workplace Research Centre at the University of Sydney, said group training organisations (GTOs) were “too locked into a training concept”. “You’re too conservative,” Buchanan told GTO representatives at the ‘Skill 2 Work’ conference. “You’ve got practices in the way you use field offices – the way they help structure on-the-job training arrangements – which would be the envy of any other part of the economy.” Australia’s 150-plus GTOs collectively employ around 40,000 apprentices and trainees and farm them out to work – short or long-term – in host businesses. GTOs take care of the payroll and paperwork while case-managing the trainees and advising and supporting the employers. Many also arrange or provide off-the-job training. Buchanan said the model should be extended to other sectors and other types of workers. “You’ve got to think, how can our model go to other parts of the labour market? What is our vision for engineering? What is our vision for care work? “What are you doing in health? The medical profession is in deep crisis. One of the reasons it’s in deep crisis is because there’s been a collapse in instructional on-the-job training. “You should be thinking up-market. You’re not imperialistic enough. It’s not just reproducing what you’ve done; it’s deepening what you’ve done.” Buchanan said group training was one of Australia’s two “major contributions to western civilisation”, along with the award system. But he said the group training network had been too focused on “defending its patch” in the trades. He said GTO field officers could fill a gap in “the weakest part” of the VET system – industry feedback. “It’s not industry that’s shaped the training system, it’s been a few individuals in a few employer organisations who’ve sat at a few peak tables and made some big decisions,” he said. “That’s not industry. Industry is day-to-day managers at workplace level who have to make and do things. If you look at the European systems, there is significant devolution in the authority and the running of the education system, but it’s not to peak body skills spokesmen. It’s to what the Germans call meisters – masters of their craft. “We’ve got to set up a means of recognition and representation for that strata of industry.” Buchanan said GTO field officers harvested “massive intelligence” every day on what employers were thinking and how they were using their trainees or the apprentices. “You have people specialised in looking after engineering employers and aged care employers. You have a very important role to play, given the inadequacies of employer representation.” Group Training Australia CEO Jim Barron told Campus Review that group training had enormous potential. “While it is already working successfully across the areas of entry-level apprenticeships and traineeships and in the indigenous, disability, school-based and mature age employment and training spaces, it is fundamentally underutilised,” he said. Barron said GTO field officers were a critical component of the GTO employment intermediary model. But he said they were also resource-hungry – especially regionally based officers who travelled hundreds of kilometres every week. “Not only does it need to be utilised better and smarter; the group training model needs to be better resourced,” he said. “It really comes down to how governments view the group training model going forward – how to most effectively deploy it, fund it and challenge it.”