VET News

VET Reform Set to Support an Adaptive Workforce

The Australian Government Productivity Commission has released a set of 29 reform directives in response to its 5-year Productivity Inquiry: Advancing Prosperity.

This report was sent to Government on 7 February 2023, then tabled in Parliament and publicly released on 17 March 2023. It is the second in a series, undertaken at 5 yearly intervals – the first Inquiry report Shifting the Dial was completed in 2017.

The report is divided into 9 volumes:

• An overview document (volume 1) that presents the commission's policy agenda.
• Inquiry content volumes (volumes 2–9) that explain in greater detail the reforms that make up the policy agenda, including a modelling appendix.

Seven of the reform directives are described under the commission's Building an Adaptable Workforce: Education section of the resulting Recommendations and Reform Directives document and are heavily focused on ways in which the VET sector is impacted by, and can impact upon, future reforms.  The seven reform directives are:

1. Improve schools’ capacity to lay the educational foundations for the future workforce

• Leverage digital technology in schools
• Make best practice teaching common practice

2. Enable innovative schooling approaches for improved learning outcomes

• Enable experimentation with alternative approaches to schooling

3. Grow access to tertiary education

• Grow access to higher education over time
• Better targeting of investment in higher education
• Improve price setting in tertiary education
• Expand loan eligibility to more students

4. Support a culture of lifelong learning for an agile workforce

• Consolidate support for lifelong learning

5. Increase tertiary education teaching quality to underpin a  well-trained workforce

• Leverage information to improve quality
• Professionalise the teaching role
• Develop an Australian evidence base
• Favour light-handed and simple incentives over performance-based funding

6. Better and more flexible matching between students

• Expand alternative exit opportunities through the provision of nested qualifications
• Give students support to complete and clarity to exit

7. VET reform that supports an adaptive workforce

• Support a responsive VET sector
• Improve VET teaching, pathways and partnerships

Access the Productivity Commission's full report and recommendations using the links below:

• Advancing Prosperity: 5-year Productivity Inquiry Report
• Recommendations and Reform Directives

Date posted Mar 23, 2023