Learning for jobs: OECD reviews of vocational education and training: Australia

For OECD member countries, high-level workplace skills are considered a key means of supporting economic growth. Systems of vocational education and training (VET) are now under intensive scrutiny to determine if they can deliver the skills required. Learning for Jobs is an OECD study of vocational education and training designed to help countries make their VET systems more responsive to labour market needs. It will expand the evidence base, identify a set of policy options and develop tools to appraise VET policy initiatives. The Australian VET system has many strengths including...  [+] Show more

For OECD member countries, high-level workplace skills are considered a key means of supporting economic growth. Systems of vocational education and training (VET) are now under intensive scrutiny to determine if they can deliver the skills required. Learning for Jobs is an OECD study of vocational education and training designed to help countries make their VET systems more responsive to labour market needs. It will expand the evidence base, identify a set of policy options and develop tools to appraise VET policy initiatives. The Australian VET system has many strengths including strong engagement of employers, a well established national qualification system, extensive VET data and research. The system is flexible and allows for a fair degree of local autonomy and experimentation. But at the same time there are a number of challenges, including a lack of clarity and potentially duplication in the respective roles of Commonwealth, states and territories in planning and delivering VET, a lack of clear and simple rules for entitlement to funding, difficulties in providing a reliable foundation in skills forecasts, some gaps in the data base, somewhat complicated and cumbersome training packages and an ageing teacher and trainer workforce. Among the review’s recommendations: (1) agree on common principles for VET funding and provision and achieve as much administrative consistency as possible; (2) quantify costs and benefits arising from duplication of responsibilities and from local variation; (3) encourage student choice of providers; (4) ensure that a range of provision is available to all and that information about providers to users is of good quality; (5) encourage part-time work of trainers in VET providers; (6) develop innovative strategies to sustain the number and skills of the VET teacher and trainer labour force, and (7) replace training packages by simple and much briefer statements of skills standards. OECD is conducting country VET policy reviews in Australia, Austria, Belgium (Flanders), the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom (England and Wales), and the United States (South Carolina and Texas).

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Other reports in the series are indexed at TD/TNC 94.517, TD/TNC 94.518 and TD/TNC 95.602.