VET will buddy up with higher education (HE) to help make Denise Bradley’s integrated tertiary sector a reality, predicts Philip Bullock, chair of Skills Australia. But VET’s main players may struggle to integrate with each other, Bullock told a Sydney ...

Is the transition between VET and the university sector a case of spanning bridges or crossing moats full of crocodiles, asks Ros Brennan Kemmis. In her speech of 4 March, Julia Gillard commented that in terms of Australia’s productivity and ...

With the release of COAG’s workplan, Damon Anderson reflects on the skills reform agenda and finds it lacking imagination. We are purportedly in the midst of an education revolution involving major investment in school infrastructure and revitalisation of higher education. ...

What would happen if we turned off automatic pilot and became more mindful, asks John Mitchell. It was one of those front page newspaper headlines senior public servants must dread. “$1 million junket to keep federal fat cats happy,” read ...

Queensland reshuffle Ferny Bay MP Geoff Wilson is Queensland’s new Minister for Education and Training, following a major shake-up of the state ministry in the wake of the election and the retirement of former education and arts minister Rod Welford. ...

The federal government is changing the guidelines for its apprenticeship rescue package, amid fears that the program is too rigid to save apprentices’ jobs. But some training figures still fear the package isn’t flexible enough to prevent redundancies. Last month ...

<<<Do community colleges deserve $100m funding for infrastructure, asks John Mitchell.<<< Last December, the education minister Julia Gillard unexpectedly announced a stimulus package of $500 million for training infrastructure. The allocation of 80 per cent of the funds to TAFE ...

The number of apprentices and trainees is continuing to climb from the trough in 2004, according to the latest figures from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research. But experts warn that data for the next two quarters will be ...

The NSW government and the Greens are at loggerheads over TAFE teachers’ pay and casualisation rates, with the education union standing somewhere in between. NSW Greens MP and education spokesperson John Kaye says “government cost-cutting is worsening the skills crisis ...

Workers retraining confirmed by Seek A leading employment index shows Australians are looking to improve their skills to become more competitive in the softening job market. The latest Seek Employment Index (SEI), which measures the ratio of new job ads ...