Education minister Julia Gillard’s vision for “cohesive” post-school education, outlined at this month’s Big Skills conference, goes most of the way towards realising the integrated tertiary education system recommended by Denise Bradley. Gillard said she’d work with the states and ...

Davidson moves from DEEWR to TVET Jim Davidson, currently a DEEWR deputy secretary and a member of the TVET board, will take up the position of interim CEO of TVET Australia at the end of April when he retires from ...

What was the main message from the recent Big Skills Conference, asks John Mitchell. In inviting keynote speakers from around the globe to present their views about workforce development, the organisers of the recent Big Skills conference in Sydney expected ...

The working poor are those who can most benefit from increased participation at higher levels in VET, says Barbara Pocock. In Australia work-life pressures are most commonly discussed with respect to professionals: managers, engineers, doctors, lawyers and journalists who juggle ...

A newly released OECD evaluation finds that there is much to commend in the Australian VET system’s approach to innovation, although there are also significant deficiencies. But a local innovation expert says much the same about the evaluation itself. The ...

“Like an Apple Mac and a PC, our university and VET sectors need the right bridging software to connect effectively. The seamlessness of qualifications, fees, income support and regulatory oversight will all have to be re-examined as we look to ...

Having already committed itself to a virtually unlimited number of vocational training places, the Victorian Government will now commit to over 100,000 more under a special deal which will see the Victorian Training Guarantee effectively merged with the federal government’s ...

Vocational education and training’s status as the poor relation of higher education is being directly challenged by the growth of new postgraduate qualifications offered by some TAFE institutes. The vocational graduate certificate and the vocational graduate diploma align under the ...

How do we know whether TAFE colleges are effective? By John Mitchell. A question raised at the Big Skills Conference in Sydney last week by speakers such as Dr Song-Seng Law, the former director of the award-winning Institute of Technical ...

NSW has signed up for the first time to the Productivity Places Program, with the Commonwealth and state governments jointly committing $620 million to establish 175,000 new training places for unemployed people and workers who want to improve their qualifications. ...