The revival of distance education contains a glimpse of the future, says John Mitchell. Over the last 15 or so years, distance education was widely viewed as boring correspondence study and a relic of the pre-internet era. So it is ...
More »NCVER “needs to listen”
John Mitchell says SSA findings misrepresented In Campus Review last week NCVER’s Dr Tom Karmel wrote an opinion piece No country for straw men, criticising a recent report of Service Skills Australia (SSA), Benefits of Accurately Measuring Non-Completions, for which ...
More »Demand-driven VET needs talent at the top
Why are vocational education managers and leaders given scant attention asks John Mitchell. On International Women’s Day, it was uncomfortable to watch a few members of the audience of the ABC’s panel show Q&A taking some cheap shots at the ...
More »Pumping up professionals
Sports-style leadership needed in VET, writes John Mitchell. I have just watched our Prime Minister on the evening news rousing the faithful crowd at an AFL Western Bulldogs event, proudly holding aloft a jersey with her name on it and ...
More »Unexpected love for TAFE
SA government reverses the trend, writes John Mitchell. The elephant in the room in VET is TAFE. It delivers most of the training and enrols the vast majority of students in VET, but its owners, the state and territory governments, ...
More »Systematic not simple apprenticeships
There is no quick fix to the skills shortage, says John Mitchell. The recent floods in Queensland have led to headlines around Australia that rebuilding the damaged sections of the state will be slowed down by the lack of skilled ...
More »TAFE earns compensation
Providers deserve payments for community service activities, says John Mitchell. Observers may be surprised by some of the recommendations in the Productivity Commission’s recent draft report on the VET workforce. One is that VET providers, and TAFE institutes in particular, ...
More »TAFE gets inside industry
TAFE staff are relocating to industry workplaces, John Mitchell finds. At the start of 2010, a report by Skills Australia called for VET providers to support the development of industry workforces around Australia. The year ends with the release of ...
More »NBN critical for regional vocational education
What justifies educational technology asks John Mitchell. The major flexible learning program in Australian VET, the Australian Flexible Learning Program, is being evaluated externally. Perhaps this is the ideal time to develop a new rationale for the use of technology ...
More »Reversing non-completions
Are reasons for non-completions worth examining, asks John Mitchell. The discussion paper recently released by Skills Australia, Creating a future direction for Australian VET, raised some immediate controversies, (Campus Review Vol 20, No 21) but one particular section of the ...
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