Gillard unveils multi-billion dollar skills plan

The government today elevated skills training to be a key economic driver by promising that all Australians would be entitled to government-funded training if the states and territories sign up to a new federal government plan. And Prime Minister Julie Gillard put the onus on the states to ensure only quality providers would access public funding and that TAFEs benefit from the extra $1.75 billion that would be made available. The national training entitlement would mean anyone from Year 10 students to retirement age would be eligible for taxpayer-funding to get qualifications up to a Certificate III. This would include language and literacy courses. The government also plans to introduce interest-free deferred loans to help students pay for vocational education courses. They would be similar to the HECS loans, which have been available to university students for 23 years. Gillard announced the plan today at an Australian Industry Group (AIG) meeting and will to take the new measures to the next Council of Australian Governments meeting, to be held on April 13. "With these reforms, VET will no longer be the poor relation," she said in a speech to the AIG. "It can be fairly said that our nation's long neglect of vocational education is at an end." The states and territories would need to ensure only quality providers with an established record could access public funding. They would also have to lay out their plan to navigate the established TAFE systems through the changes. To sweeten the deal for the states and territories, the Commonwealth will offer $7.2 billion over five years to help pay for the training system. It will also share out another $1.75 billion to support the changes. Gillard said the federal funding for the national training entitlement would potentially amount to $155 million a year. The skills package also includes setting up a MySkills website to give information on training providers, course options, employment outcomes and fees. Students would get a unique student identifier that would let them track the qualifications they received from different providers. Gillard said better approaches to training, teacher quality and student support could help about 375,000 extra students complete their qualifications in the next five years which detailed a commitment to elevate skills as a key economic driver. In her address the Prime Minister also said that Australia had witnessed a shift in its economic interests from America and Europe to Asia in a single generation, it was also seeing shares of employment and activity move towards services and high tech production and the dollar rise to sustained high levels. “It is a major structural realignment of our economy; an externally-led change as big as any we have seen in 200 years. Like the 1980s, it is a time to choose.” It was time she said to chart a conscious and deliberate pathway to sustained prosperity, or face the alternative of mediocre growth or even decline. The next wave of reform after schools and higher education had to be in the area of skills. Our plan encompasses TAFE and all of vocational education, and it starts with this simple proposition: skills are no longer an optional extra but a necessity. “In the new economy we are creating, few Australians can or should be left to embark on their working lives without skills and qualifications.” TAFE Directors Australia (TDA) welcomed the Prime Minister’s statement and said it marked an historic point in the balance toward opening up taxpayer funding to Australian training to private colleges amid revelations of failed quality and past fraudulent rorting of VET funding. Stephen Conway, chair of TDA who attended the address by the Prime Minister at a special meeting of skills stakeholders in Canberra today said the commitment was welcome, along with the new government guidelines to introduce evaluations on VET quality. He said these were necessary after the early failures to open up the training market, only to find rorts and industry concerns about skills quality. “The Prime Minister’s commitment is pleasing, as we have seen early experiences of open competition funding in jurisdictions like Victoria, where colleges collapsed, student fees lost, a grab by private colleges to seek access to publicly funded courses, with confidence in the training system shaken,” said Conway. The Commonwealth proposals are yet to be signed by states and territories other than South Australia, and require a commitment to ‘Entitlement Funding’ with heavy subsidies for students seeking qualifications to Certificate III, and access to income contingent loans for diploma and associate diplomas, TDA said. TAFE Directors Australia represents Australia’s 61 TAFE Institutes, including the five dual sector universities with TAFE divisions, enrolling some 1.65 million students each year across 1,300 campus locations. Group Training Australia (GTA) also welcomed the Prime Minister’s statement today which detailed a commitment to elevate skills as a key economic driver. GTA chief executive, Jim Barron, said it is essential that vocational education and training (VET) is at the centre of the policy agenda, to ensure that Australia meets the skills and productivity demands into the future. “These reform announcements are subject to the states coming on board, however if adopted, they will help to provide the funding and opportunity necessary to build a strong, quality and more highly valued training system. Barron said that measures aimed to increase access, and to help students, employers and providers to navigate the system, are long overdue. He said the commitment to a unique student identifier is central to achieving these objectives.He said the GTA training network looks forward to continuing its critical role in the training system. http://www.deewr.gov.au/Skills/Documents/SkillsforAustraliasFuture.pdf Read more from our VET Special Report series here.