Research must inform solutions to completions – comment by CEO Jenny Dodd

It was terrific to be part of the AVETRA conference last week and to contribute to a panel titled: ‘Policy, place and partnership: the interoperable tertiary system’ chaired by AVETRA President, Kira Clarke.  Although I was only part of the event for a day, this was a conference that dug deep into the relevant ‘challenges’ facing VET.

I most enjoyed hearing about some of the great work of the various researchers who presented at the conference. I joined the Challenging Times stream which included presentations from Warren Guest from TAFE in Victoria, Peter Schreiner from TAFE NSW and Sally Thompson who has led discourse on VET and equity and access for many years.

Sally’s research explored the Certificate III Individual Support from the perspective of local employers and students. She echoed the voice of students with ‘strong lived experiences’ of the industries they were studying, such as aged care, even though those students had poor ‘school-based literacies’. She quoted students who found the course ‘repetitive’. One of her core findings was that the training package did not support the development of threshold knowledge, which was a key limitation, in the view of her employer research participants. Those employers felt the product was not fit for purpose for their industry as it did not adequately tackle important concepts such as power and abuse, enabling technology and ethics of care.

Warren Guest, a Bakery teacher from Holmesglen Institute followed Sally with a powerful presentation drawing distinctions about the intentions of various industry sub-groups who designed the training package. He found that there were subcultures in this industry which influenced the outcome. His exploration of the training package development process highlighted the impact of the differences in the expectations of those industry sub-cultures and the consequent outcomes of the product. This industry is one of those where apprentice completions are some of the lowest, being around 30%. His research looked at the product and the influence of these subcultures which may well be a contributing factor.

Both had very different research participants, yet both concluded that the training packages were not meeting either employer or student needs. Discussions about product were also explored by Craig Robertson from the Victorian Skills Authority in his opening presentation when he stated, ‘the logic of using competency for all solutions needs consideration’.

TDA has been saying for over eighteen months, that a ‘one training package’ solution does not work. We need to be able to adapt to local employer needs. These examples demonstrate that much more flexibility is needed, and in Craig’s words, ‘localism’ is important. All three of those presenters came to much the same conclusion from very different starting points.

The presentations by the two Peters were also very well received. Professor Peter Dawkins of Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) highlighted the key components of JSA’s work while Associate Professor Peter Hurley of the Mitchell Institute at Victoria University explored the complexities of VET policy challenges. Through development of the themes of meaning and measures, one of Peter Hurley’s conclusions was the need for VET to ‘put the institution back into the centre’ – a conclusion all TAFEs support, as does Minister O’Connor with his commitment to putting ‘TAFE at the heart of the VET sector’. In the five-year $4.1 billion national skills partnership at least 70 percent of Commonwealth funding for VET will be for TAFE.

Minister O’Connor spoke directly to the researchers in the room. He said ‘some immediate challenges where good research and analysis could make a real difference in informing how to improve VET (include) … why half of the students and workers that start a VET course don’t finish – and how to turn that around. Of all the apprentices and trainees that commenced training in 2017, the latest figures show that just 55.7% reached completion.’

Research by practitioners such as Sally and Warren who have combined decades of experience that includes TAFE teaching and who are diving deeply into issues of their industries must inform future directions.