To achieve a harmonised tertiary education sector there must be flexibility – comment by CEO, Jenny Dodd

TDA has promulgated for many years that a one-size-fits-all approach through training packages and competency based assessment is not necessarily serving all learners or all industries well. The qualification review process last year supported the need for more flexibility in qualification design.

The nursing profession is the first that would benefit from a different approach. TDA’s Director Policy and Governance, Dr Teressa Schmidt, is one of the lead authors of the attached paper exploring this proposal in depth.

Teressa writes “Vocational Education and Training (VET) is a valuable, legitimate part of nurse preparation. It is a vital link in the supply of the much-needed nursing workforce – but under the current Training Package approach, the potential of VET’s contribution is constrained.

Competency-based training and national Training Packages have been an enduring feature of Australia’s VET system since the 1990s. This method of ‘codifying’ and ‘reproducing’ skills has served some occupations well but created challenges for others, such as nursing. The paper outlines the impact of Training Packages on the preparation of nurses. It shows how the Training Package approach effectively ‘filters’ and reshapes the international, scientific knowledge base of nursing to fit templates that do not serve the profession. The paper describes how in higher education nursing curriculum there is no filter between the international body of knowledge and what nurses learn.

This absence of interference is contrasted with what happens in VET, where Training Package rules can dominate and distort what student nurses learn.  The paper highlights the impact of the Training Package on the skills and knowledge brought to the nursing profession by VET graduates and the challenges they face when transitioning to higher education to extend their professional training. Importantly, it emphasises that it is not the educational provider that creates the problem, but the misalignment between vocational and higher education created by the existing Training Package approach.

This current period of tertiary harmonisation and VET qualification reforms represents an opportunity to rethink educational models and pathways for occupations such as nursing. An aligned, ‘harmonised’ curriculum would facilitate smoother articulation and professional transitions for enrolled and registered nurses. Increasingly, enrolled nurses and registered nurses learn within the same educational settings, although with different curricula. A reformed curriculum would extend this provision, affording the two different categories of nurses an opportunity to study shoulder to shoulder, just as they work in industry.”

See One Profession, Two Ways of Thinking: Challenges in Developing Australia’s Nursing Workforce