We need to develop and nurture a new way of understanding generic competencies, says Larry Smith.   It is now more than 15 years ago that I participated in a national committee, chaired by Eric Mayer, to develop a set ...

Vocational training has assumed a central role in the federal government’s economic crisis response, with $187 million of the budget surplus allocated to create yet another 56,000 training places and elevate the investment in the Productivity Places Program to $2 ...

The federal government takes every opportunity to talk up its Productivity Places Program (PPP). “In just over six months, more than 53,000 jobseekers have enrolled in the program, with 43,200 in training and over 11,000 having completed training,” education minister ...

Are there alternatives to training packages for remote indigenous communities? Many VET leaders are preoccupied with two looming challenges: preparing for contestable funding and anticipating the implications for VET from the Bradley review of higher education. For Aaron Devine, Charles ...

Victorian skills minister Jacinta Allan last week revealed details of the taskforce that will examine the state’s international education sector. Allan said the taskforce’s findings would feed into the development of an international education strategy, designed to maintain the state’s ...

What is needed for TAFE to take its place as a higher education provider, asks Leesa Wheelahan.   TAFE institutes now offer degrees and associate degrees in five states in Australia. We are no longer discussing whether TAFE should offer ...

Many providers committed to delivering quality training are concerned about the future direction of VET. Their concerns were brought to the surface recently by the low prices offered per student by the Commonwealth for the Productivity Places Program (PPP). For ...

Geof Hawke argues that our approach to involving employers in education and training hasn’t made enough allowance for the wide variations among employers.   Once again attention is being drawn to the importance of establishing a means by which employers ...

Australia’s VET system is bogged down by a multiplicity of authorities which have passed their use-by dates, Skills Australia suggests in a discussion paper on future governance of the national VET system. The “extensive array of advisory and regulatory bodies ...

Why are TAFE providers offering more and more degree programs?   The issue of TAFE providers offering degrees gained national media attention recently with negative reactions to the decision by Holmesglen Institute in Victoria to offer a nursing degree. While ...