COAG has vowed to lift its game, with improvements in VET performance between 2009 and 2020. But new data reveals the magnitude of the improvements required. VET will have to improve its performance markedly to meet the COAG targets, the ...

Is it possible to rank VET teachers’ skills and knowledge, asks John Mitchell. There are moves afoot to define teaching standards for all school teachers in Australia, so the question follows as to whether standards can be set for VET ...

Toby Miller finds he knows a little more – and a little less – about US history than he suspected. I recently collected my third nationality: in the last week of 2009, I became a US citizen. To do so, ...

There has been much soul searching about the nature of Australia’s international education sector. Now the time has come to look forward, writes Stephen Connelly. Last year will be remembered as the year in which international education in Australia finally ...

Have government promises to get their “foot off the throat of universities” actually occurred or is red tape just endemic to government policy, asks Conor King. “Rather than bureaucratic red tape and micromanaging of inputs, the Australian government will work ...

Cash cows or backdoor migrants – what are the realities of international students and skilled migration? By Shanthi Robertson The student-migrants at the centre of the recent skilled migration changes have been cast in contradictory roles by the Australian media. ...

There is a message for vocational training in the recent Toyota crisis, writes Larry Smith. For decades, the name Toyota has been synonymous with quality production, performance and safety in automobiles. In recent weeks, however, that reputation has taken a ...

Can public secondary schools teach VET providers anything about innovation, asks John Mitchell. In the minds of many VET providers, innovation in relation to student engagement is not a top priority at the moment. Providers are preoccupied with several new ...

A culture of continuous improvement is least effective in the most needy, writes Anita Roberts. Who wants to talk about continuous improvement? Within VET, and probably elsewhere, it is difficult to use the term without accompanying grimaces and eye-rolling. It ...

Government spending on universities and schools barely kept pace with inflation in the latter years of the Howard government. But spending on public VET went backwards. Universities might have cried poor during the Howard years. But they did a hell ...