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The PC’s VET report card: no ‘crisis’ but ‘acknowledged weaknesses’ and ‘where to now’?
This article has two purposes. The first is to summarise the Productivity Commission’s Report on the National Skills and Workforce Development Agreement which has just been released with little fanfare in the heat haze of the summer holidays. As yet, there is no formal response from the Australian Government, neither from the Treasurer who commissioned the review in November 2019, nor from the portfolio Minister responsible. The second is to look forward and question whether or not the nation has in place effective VET governance structures that are capable of driving swift and practical reforms that the PC recommends.
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Craig Fowler approves of the Productivity Commission’s recommendation on easing access to VET Student Loans for VET Diplomas and extending loans to include VET Certificate IV’. The damage done to VET and to thousands of individual people by the previous VET FEE-HELP system appears to have passed him by. One of the worst things that could happen to VET would be to expand the existing system; and to extend it to other qualification levels could create untold harm.
VET is a highly marketised system, and unfortunately many providers (even public ones) are not especially ethical in their business behaviour. They would look for any loophole in an expanded system. My jaw dropped when I read the PC’s recommendation, and it dropped still further when I read Craig Fowler’s comments. Perhaps people need to remind themselves of what happened in the mid-2010s.