The VET moon shot – comment by CEO Craig Robertson

There has been some commentary arising from TDA’s submission to the Productivity Commission about the centrality of technology transfer and TAFEs role in it. Surely the advancement of students is the mission, was the question? Walla – what comes first, skills or industry?

Skills are embodied in the individual and Industry utilises them – both the individuals and their skills. Both must progress over time though, and the challenge is how to do that.

Technology transfer – is not just about coding and computers – but is the way a country produces, fabricates, distributes, sells and delivers goods and services, from the smallest of inputs to an end state whether it be a product, a construction, a service or client recovered from a health intervention. These components are no longer exchanged and traded solely within a country but around the globe.

VET provides skills for most of these components. They are part of our economic, health and social activity.

The technology race in on though – more so than the Americans’ race to the moon following the success of Sputnik.

It’s been a while since we’ve used the slide rule for complex calculations, or a ledger book for book-keeping or a pen and paper to write a letter. Technology moves on. There is now plenty of evidence around us that exponential technology change is heading our way triggered by automation, digitisation, 5G and AI. If we think the occupations served by VET are immune from new technology transactions, we need to think again. There is a push for building automation technologies to speed up construction, automatic brick laying machines take over back breaking work and sensors measure the vital signs of a patient previously done by the nurse. Technologies cross fields. Mining industry executives tell me that diesel mechanics also need core electrotechnology skills to service their technology laden heavy loaders. Who would have thought a blow torch is a key tool in the modern kitchen to finish off the meringue?

These are all aspects of the world of work which the VET sector needs to keep up with. Training packages are far from the facsimile for technology transfer. The neatly codified and collated standards upon which packages are made are about the behaviours to be demonstrated in the workplace. They represent some elements of the technology of production but it is hard to see how they gear up an individual for the tough gig of work in the context of rapid change.

The Productivity Commission seems to have built its recommendations for VET on this simple form. It believes a market can deliver for VET in Australia. This can only be based on the notion that competency, as prescribed in training packages underpinned by a loose description of the standards expected of a training organisation, will deliver. A sum of simple transactions begging for the cheapest price and convenient delivery, with quality secured through more loose regulation.

The rate of change – the increase in sophistication in technology transfer – even the exponential increase in consumer expectations – should cause us to stop and think that maybe some new approaches are needed.

Professor John Buchannan in his submission to the Commission concludes, ‘This (VET) system is anchored around formal compliance with fragmented units of competence – not coherent ensembles of skill that define people’s substantive capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. The antidote? ‘Most importantly, there is no substantive institutional basis for education and skills quality,’ he concludes.

TAFEs are the institutional element bringing together the two elements – skills and industry. It is what is often called TAFEs as anchor institutions. If training packages are not the answer to rapid technology change then what is? This is the other element of the institutional capacity of TAFEs. Across many areas of industry and technology they have the capability, part of their public mission, to keep pace with technology. As the leaders in these fields, consistent again with public ownership, they can bring new technology to industries and across industries.

The question is whether a new form of organising for technical and vocational education can be framed that is more than fragmented competency to be delivered by the cheapest bidder.

It’s a new form of vocational education and a much-needed capability secured in the public purpose of TAFEs for the benefit of all.

I invoke JFK:

We choose to go to the Moon…We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.

This is the VET sector’s shot to the moon. The new frontier.

I reckon a workforce skilled by a new form of VET would break barriers we couldn’t even dream of. Skilled and activated individuals can create new industry. Maybe skills does come first?