The adult and community education sector plays a significant role in the social inclusion agenda, says Kaye Bowman.   Governments tell us social inclusion is important. The best future for Australia will rest on its ability to develop the capacities ...

Training in NSW would suffer if the state’s TAFE structure was broken up into autonomous institutions, according to the former federal shadow education minister and current chair of the TAFE Commission Board, Michael Lee. Lee, a rising Labor star before ...

Trade centres in schools: have teachers been forgotten, asks Ros Brennan Kemmis.   The education revolution is a central plank in the Rudd Government’s agenda. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) have agreed on a set of mutually recognised targets ...

Core VET funding will flow to states and territories regardless of progress in market reform, according to the head of the COAG sub-group on skills development. Chris Eccles, chair of the skills and workforce development sub-group of COAG’s productivity agenda ...

The states are yet to decide how they’ll respond to the COAG consultation paper on VET reform, including its contentious market redesign proposals. Queensland’s Department of Education, Training and the Arts told Campus Review it hadn’t finalised its decisions. The ...

Contrary to popular wisdom, new research has revealed a surprisingly high proportion of early school leavers achieve positive learning and labour market outcomes. Furthermore, many of the groups most likely to leave school early have made considerable progress in recent ...

How can a dual-sector university access its genius and gems?   When Elizabeth Harman took up the position of vice-chancellor of Victoria University five years ago, she found a large organisation that was creative but lacking in some other ways. ...

The Victorian TAFE Association has appealed directly to Premier John Brumby to exempt TAFEs from restrictive advertising and communication approval guidelines recently imposed on the state’s public entities. The seven-stage approval process – which can delay ads, brochures and communication ...

Victoria’s VET reform is based on questionable assumptions and offers as many risks as opportunities, according to the head of the state’s second-largest TAFE institute. Virginia Simmons, CEO of Chisholm Institute of TAFE, told a Canberra conference last month that ...

Too much training is taking place in lower level qualifications, and there are compelling reasons why this should shift upwards, says Peter Kell.   The origins of the global economic crisis lie in the low-wage and low-skills economy that has ...