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Health Workforce New Zealand (HWNZ) was set up in 2009 to provide national leadership on the development of the country's health and disability workforce. HWNZ has a national focus across the broad scope of the health and disability workforce, including the clinical, non-clinical, private and non-government organisation (NGO) workforces. HWNZ aims to ensure that the health workforce is appropriately configured to meet current and future health needs, so New Zealanders can be confident that they will receive the best health care possible. To identify and develop mutually owned solutions to the challenges our sector faces, HWNZ has developed a taskforce and a work programme for each of six key workforces: doctors, nurses, midwives, allied health workers, non-regulated workers (kaiawhina) and leaders. This report is structured around the taskforces. It includes an outline of each taskforce: its composition, its work programme and how it contributes to government priorities. Certain key areas of work underpin the work programmes of all the taskforces, including workforce data and intelligence and investment priorities.

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This paper outlines the events that led up to the adoption of Objective Measurement of wool and sale by sample by the wool industry and discusses the problems associated with the change and the duration of wool industry personnel during that era. It suggests that similar problems will be experienced with the implementation of the Additional Measurements leading to sale by description unless specific educational strategies are followed. It recommends that the systematic approach proposed by Derek Rowntree be used as a model from which the instruction could be designed. It cites a need for the Australian Wool Corporation to play a role in education of the manufacturing sector, both in Australia and overseas, in the uses of the new measurements, and recommends recurrent training courses be designed with provision for including the new information in the current syllabi for certificate courses in sheep and wool and woolclassing.

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This guide has been produced primarily for officers of service and community agencies who assist the overseas trained. It provides easy access to information on assessing authorities for migrants seeking accreditation and/or recognition of overseas gained qualifications and skills. Migrants entering Australia seek recognition or accreditation within a wide range of occupations.

The guide provides an alphabetical listing of a comprehensive range of occupations which are organised into the categories professional, para-professional, trades and other. The following are provided for each listing: (1) description of the occupation; (2) local entry and training requirements; (3) procedures and contact numbers for obtaining recognition of overseas-gained qualifications and experience; (4) relevant unions or professional associations; (5) any other publications available concerning qualifications in that occupation.

The guide will be revised on a regular basis. Each page will indicate when the information was last updated. Show less

This paper is concerned with the current and future role of the minimum wage in Australia. It presents a comprehensive analysis of the minimum wage over the last 25 years. The author finds that while the minimum wage has remained at about the same level, an increase in government support has raised prosperity for the country's poorest working families. The substantive question this paper is concerned with is the implications of this for the minimum wage into the future. Notwithstanding considerable debate around the impact of changes to minimum wages on employment, long term sustained growth in the real value of the minimum wage without productivity growth by workers in receipt of the minimum wage is likely to have detrimental impacts on employment. Following the introduction, the paper is structured as follows: chapter two looks at the development of the Australian minimum wage over the 20th century; chapter three examines the current role of the minimum wage. It considers the types of jobs which are paid at this rate, and the relationship between income from the minimum wage and household income. It also reviews the nature and level of minimum wages in a number of countries and compares these with Australia's; chapter four is concerned in more detail with the changes in the minimum wage over the past 25 years and the relationship between the minimum wage and the tax transfer system; chapter five considers the economics of the minimum wage. The first part is theoretical and examines the various approaches to understanding the economic role and consequences of a minimum wage. The second part provides an extensive overview of some of the more recent Australian and international research in this field; and chapter six, drawing on the previous chapters, and some of the central policy priorities enunciated by Australian governments, identifies some of the challenges for minimum wage policy over the next 25 years, and strategies which may be used to address these.

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This paper explores opportunities and challenges presented by the development of graduate skills in Australian universities. We challenge the dichotomy that conceives of a fundamental disjuncture between the idea of universities as institutions of vocational education and the more traditional conception of universities as key institutions in the formation of reflective practitioners, social critics and good citizens. Despite the challenges inherent in implementing the graduate skills project, we conclude that a consensus around the value of graduate skills represents a valuable opportunity for universities to regain control of the higher education agenda and renew their traditional, higher purpose.

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This publication provides an overview of three research study projects.

Study 1: Economic perspectives on [adult and community education] ACE. The first project had two distinct parts. The first surveyed the financial conditions of [New South Wales] NSW ACE providers in 2005. The second part of the study was a cost-benefit analysis of ACE courses. Together with financial data, this analysis is an important perspective on the viability of providers that may inform discussion about the allocation of grants for ACE in NSW.

Study 2: Adaptive ACE organisations: responding to uncertainty. This research recognises that virtually since the inception of the community ownership model in the 1990s, ACE organisations have been continually challenged to adapt to new policy and new market conditions. It was felt that what has been learned about adaptability can be codified and shared, and assist in strengthening the capacity of organisations.

Study 3: Market segmentation in ACE. The Market Segmentation Project explored the application of the National Marketing Strategy framework as a basis for differentiating client groups in ACE - to what extent providers might be targeting clients beyond the passionate learners and the learn-to-earn group that populate many ACE classes. These groups are defined by the barriers to their participation in learning (the almost-there, learning-is-on-hold and make-it-easier groups).

The three research reports offer much to inform both policy and practice. They will be a valuable resource for ACE organisations as they seek to manage an increasingly fluid and uncertain environment. It is clear that in the new environment there will be both new opportunities and resource challenges for NSW ACE providers, as they develop towards greater independence.

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The Cooperative Venture for Capacity Building for Innovation in Rural Industries (CVCB) aims to build capacity in rural industries to enable more sustainable and competitive industries. Education and training play a vital role in encouraging the greater adoption of the innovative technical and business practices necessary for improved profitability and productivity on Australia’s farms. The responsibility for this training is largely borne by two sectors, the formal vocational education and training (VET) system, and extension (industry training), which have developed largely in isolation and with limited linkages. This report brings together available information about the sectors, and moves on to new ground by asking: should the two be better aligned? The four recommendations made by the researchers are that: the CVCB should build on moves to better align VET with extension through encouragement of industry involvement with the Agri-food Industry Skills Council and with [registered training organisations] RTOs and strengthening of links and partnerships with representation of the other sector on Advisory Boards; the CVCB should encourage training brokers to assist in further coordination of training efforts in the two sectors; quantitative data on producers’ attitudes towards VET and extension, and outcomes of VET and extension training, should be collected by the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics [ABARE], the National Centre for Vocational Education Research [NCVER], or an independent organisation; and extension and VET providers should look to employing credible industry people and upskill [them] as trainers. Training organisations should encourage people working in extension to become trainers through raising the profile of trainers, e.g. by scholarships, awards and promotion in industry newsletters.

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Vocational education and training (VET) should provide a vital community link between school and work but for many early school leavers this is not the case. When young people do not experience such links, any disadvantage from leaving school early can be all too easily exacerbated. In research focused on early school leavers in a New South Wales (NSW) Central Coast community our approach was to generate a multi-perspective understanding of the school-to-work transitions of these young people. Vignettes were developed of the experiences of the early school leavers as they made their individual ways into the community in the year after leaving school. Using the work of Dwyer and associates on 'types of leavers' and 'patterns of transition' a typology was developed to gain a clearer perspective on these experiences. Perspectives were also sought through interviews with community service providers, educational agencies, refuge workers and other professionals, as well as from local businesses and employers. The resulting profile of early school leavers in a community is the complex context in which VET provision operates. The study concludes with a set of recommendations that spell out what might be done to bring together the options for young people in a coherent way.

Published abstract.

The two volumes of collected papers are indexed at TD/TNC 64.287 and TD/TNC 64.355. Selected papers from volume one are indexed from TD/TNC 64.288 to TD/TNC 64.320; selected papers from volume two are indexed from TD/TNC 64.321 to TD/TNC 64.354. Show less

Using methods of empirical ontology this thesis tells of the emergence, over the last decade of the 20th century, of the Australian National Training Package, and shows how this device, with agency in contemporary Australian workplaces and educational institutions, has displaced curriculum as the means through which nationally recognised vocational education and training in Australia is organised and regulated. The training package emerged out of a twofold shift in the locus of control of vocational knowledge, and of training policy and practice in Australia: from the Australian states and territories to the Commonwealth Government; and from training and further education (TAFE) institutions and authorities to Australian industry. The proposition on which the thesis rests is that both curriculum and the training package generate a generalising logic, and that the different routines and rituals of performance in each give rise to distinct modes of ordering in vocational education and training. By exploring the historicity of curriculum as a regulatory artifact, whose origins can be traced to changes in teaching practices in European universities at the end of the 16th century, I show that curriculum, while enacted as different modalities over time, and under different pedagogical regimes, can nevertheless be described as a singular mode of ordering, bound up in classroom routines and rituals, and a foundationist framing of knowledge. I classify this as a one/many mode of doing the relation unity/plurality: a definitive cadastral accounting for people and things as subjects and objects (learners and knowledge) whose relationalities are given: fixed in advance of particular enactments through universal laws, or through the ‘universalising’ of previous social practices. As a mode of ordering in education and training, curriculum is associated with the power relations of the school and the formation of the citizen as modern learner. In moving beyond the classroom and into the realms of Australian training policy, the definitive generalising of curriculum is revealed as constitutionally unable to sustain governance beyond the spatio/temporal relations of classroom practice and the political relations of institutional learning. In pursuing the emergence of the training package as a mode of ordering of workplace learning, I describe the mode of generalising that emerged with the training package as performative and partial; strategically vague and negotiable; classifying it as a whole/part mode of doing the relation unity/plurality. Work knowledge is codified in training packages as an abstraction of the performances from which it is derived; and the codification process is reiterated in line with changes in work practice. The training package is shown to work as a technology effecting trustworthy transactions in multiple sites - workplaces, schools and other organisational spaces - by keeping its rules and processes available for scrutiny. Operating as a framework of standards and rules, the training package is able to account for different performances enacted under different conditions: representing sameness as a common currency and thereby sustaining governance of multiple work-related learning realities in a manner that curriculum-as-policy was unable to do. I conclude that, as a mode of ordering, the training package is implicated in a larger ontological break in modernity, and an emerging episteme that has to do with new ways of managing complexity and securing contingent coherence under constantly changing conditions. This ontic/epistemic shift can be witnessed in the withdrawal of governments from totalizing modern projects based on the authority of singular institutions, and the increasing adoption of audit technologies - such as the training package - to enable governance at a distance.

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Australia's Higher Degree by Research (HDR) training system is critical to Australia's future economic strength. It provides a highly qualified research workforce, enabling research and innovation across the academic, industry, government and not-for-profit sectors, as well as contributing substantially to Australia's and the world's body of knowledge. This review has engaged widely with stakeholders, including higher education and research institutes, HDR candidates and graduates, peak bodies, industry, business groups, government agencies, experts, and not-for-profit organisations in order to deliver evidence-based findings which identify opportunities to improve Australia's HDR training system.

There was broad agreement from stakeholders that Australia's HDR training system currently performs well in the areas of academic outputs. Other strengths identified include: a rich variety of choices in pathways; flexible entry requirements with provision for academic equivalence assessment; an independent, high quality examination process; and an emphasis on high quality disciplinary research and the development of associated research skills. Nevertheless Australia's performance in the area of industry-research collaboration is amongst the lowest when measured against OECD competitor countries. This situation is extremely concerning for a nation that strives to develop a vibrant knowledge based economy. Evidence suggests that there is significant room for improvement across a range of important areas relevant to HDR training.

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