VET News

Vocational Clusters - Training for Several Jobs at Once!

The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER)'s latest Podcast focuses on the concept of supporting a clustered model approach to rationalise VET qualifications.

It asks us to consider if there are too many underutilised qualifications in the Australian VET system and whether or not some of these are actually well passed their expiration date?

A suggestion here is that one method of reducing qualifications involves grouping them into vocational clusters giving individuals an opportunity to train for several jobs at once. This approach is one that may also create greater transferability of skills across the labour market.

The question is, do we have the appetite for such transformative change and is there a role for good quality training that may sit outside the formal national training system?

In this podcast Steve Davis talks to Professor John Buchanan, Business School, University of Sydney, David Morgan, CEO, Artibus Innovation and Simon Walker, Managing Director, NCVER about the notion of ‘clustering’ qualifications into vocational streams for a range of occupations and how this may be achieved.

A copy of the transcript for this episode is also available.

This podcast is Episode 4 of the NCVER's Season 5 podcast series.  Other episodes in this series are:

• Episode 3 - Investing in our workforce: cadetships vs apprenticeships
• Episode 2 - Traditional trade apprenticeships: still a trusted brand?
• Episode 1 - Workforce ready: challenges and opportunities for VET

The NCVER have also this week released its Annual Report 2019-2020 which documents important company information, activities and achievements across the financial year.  The appendices also contain details of published work, consultancy projects, presentations and submissions.

Date posted Dec 10, 2020