With numbers this tight in Canberra, VET doesn’t need to be sexy to be heard, says John Ross. Political parties have always been on pretty safe ground when they ignored vocational training. Journalists – mostly university-educated these days – tend ...

Do great practitioners in VET receive sufficient national recognition, asks John Mitchell. Which individuals and teams in VET are making an outstanding contribution to student learning? And is it worth recognising them nationally? Both these questions will draw a negative ...

Completion rates are, in the simplest sense, the proportion of people who finish a qualification they started. But what rate can be considered a good rate, asks David Roberts. There are at least two reasons why completion rates are presently ...

Stuart Middleton compares apples with Apples – and he likes both. When I started school the teacher had a view that we should be taught to read and write. Putting aside reading for the moment, we certainly got on with ...

2012 is racing towards us, and it’s bringing a truckload of questions with it, writes Stephen Parker. It has been said that a market is the combined behavior of thousands of people responding to information, misinformation and whim. We are ...

TAFE needs immediate and significant support to develop the teaching capability required to realise a high-skills economy. And the latest teaching qualification doesn’t fit the bill, writes Pat Forward. The Australian VET system is about to see yet another version ...

Educators love to talk about what they do, but the world becomes a lot more interesting without the trappings of work identity, writes Stuart Middleton. I recently undertook a program along with a group of people working at a range ...

The AQF could be the “catalyst” that binds disparate educational sectors into a seamless tertiary system. The Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) should fund the development of professional development material to help staff at schools, universities and VET colleges create inter-sectoral ...

More than $300 million from the government’s controversial $2.1 billion PPP – most of which has gone to private training colleges – will now line the pockets of cash-strapped apprentices, under a Labor election pledge. Federal Labor will reallocate funding ...

Are small providers capable of productivity and high quality, asks John Mitchell. The award ceremonies for VET providers are fast approaching, with attention normally focused on the large providers. While this celebration of the large is important, it is a ...