The federal and state governments have announced a new vocational education and training workforce blueprint, which is designed to address some of the longstanding challenges faced by the VET sector, industry and businesses around the quality and availability of the teacher, trainer and assessor workforce.
There are fourteen actions announced in the Blueprint, which will be supported by funding made available through the National Skills Plan, which was recently announced by the nation’s skills ministers. These actions include:
Data collection and research:
- Undertaking a comprehensive occupational mapping for the VET workforce to identify and inform broader actions to strengthen pathways into, and through, the VET workforce.
- Developing a VET workforce data strategy to enable the collection of VET workforce data to support and enable informed policy and workforce strategies, and inform ongoing research, and ongoing research program to develop a robust evidence base for key workforce issues.
Attracting new teachers, trainers and assessors into the profession:
- Develop targeted, coordinated and sequenced promotion strategies and activities to boost the profile of VET workforce careers and attract more people into the sector.
- Increase industry involvement in employer and RTO led responses, and encourage and facilitate industry led responses, to VET workforce challenges.
- Develop localised and bespoke First Nations strategies to build the First Nations VET workforce. These will be developed from the ground up in partnership with First Nations peoples.
- Invest in innovative VET workforce pathways through scaling up existing initiatives and/or piloting new models which contribute to an uplift in workforce capacity or capability.
- Develop initiatives to attract people into, and support and retain people in, VET workforce careers.
Developing a specialised language, literacy, numeracy and digital literacy workforce:
- Through the development of a 10-year National Foundation Skills Strategy to identify critical actions to strengthen the foundation skills sector, consider opportunities to grow and support the foundation skills workforce.
A strategy for the VET delivered in secondary schools (VDSS) workforce:
- Through the development of a National VET for Secondary Students Strategy, explore opportunities to grow and support the teacher, trainer and assessor workforce delivering VET.
Qualitative improvements and support to the existing teacher, trainer and assessor workforce:
- Implement targeted professional learning to address key industry and pedagogical priorities, including embedding best practice in inclusivity, respect and gender issues into training delivery and VET workforce culture.
- Monitor and evaluate the impact of the Training and Education (TAE) Training Package to ensure it supports teachers, trainers and assessors in the VET workforce, and promote the undertaking of higher-level qualifications to provide opportunities for ongoing practitioner development.
- Undertake work to map and analyse compliance and administrative burden and implement strategies to reduce this burden, where appropriate, for the VET workforce.
- Embed TAFE workforce leadership as a key activity of the National TAFE Network.
Ai Group welcomes the release of the strategy. We look forward to industry engagement with these initiatives, designed to ensure the VET system is better equipped to meet the skills, education and training needs of companies across the country.
Download a copy of the blueprint
