If you missed the recent webinar – ‘Online learning – beyond PDFs and Zoom’, as part of the strategic review of online learning, the webinar recording is now available. This webinar provides the opportunity to hear from a VET consultant, provider and quality assessor on how VET providers can use educational technology to enhance and support the quality of online learning and outcomes for your students.

View here.

To help Australians get the skills they need, the Australian Government is investing in apprenticeships, skills and training.

• The $1 billion JobTrainer Fund will be expanded. The Government will invest an additional $500 million to ensure Australians can skill up, including around 10,000 additional digital skills training places and around 33,800 additional training places in the aged care sector. 
• $2.7 billion to be invested to extend and expand the Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements (BAC) wage subsidy. 
• $30.9 million to be invested to deliver a new National Training Register to support work with the states and territories to reform qualifications design.
• A $12.1 million National Digital Australian Apprenticeships Portal will be established as a one-stop-shop to help employers manage their apprentice workforces and for apprentices to understand their entitlements.  
• $149.2 million over four years will be invested to support new industry engagement arrangements for the VET system, enhancing the role of industry and improving governance.
• $19.6 million will be provided for the Skills for Education and Employment (SEE) program to assist more job seekers to access the program and achieve meaningful outcomes.
• The Government is also helping secure Australia’s recovery through its Digital Workforce package, which will see 20,000 individuals upskill and reskill in digital fields.
• The National Careers Institute’s Partnerships Grants program will also be expanded, offering $12.2 million to support innovative projects that facilitate more career opportunities and supported career pathways for women.

For further information, click here.

Skills Tasmania is seeking feedback on changes to Tasmanian Traineeships and Apprenticeships Committee (TTAC) Policy 13 – Supervision under a training contract. This policy has been updated to clarify the roles and responsibilities of supervisors of apprentices and trainees on the job. A copy of the DRAFT Policy can be found here.

The Partnership Grants offers funding opportunities to assist organisations to deliver innovative career guidance services for people at all stages of their careers. The program is a key part of the Australian Government’s $585m Delivering Skills for Today and Tomorrow package.

Applications are now open for Round Two of the National Careers Institute’s Partnership Grants program and close 23rd June 2021.

For more information, click here.

In October 2020, Skills Ministers agreed to trial new evidence-led approaches to designing qualifications, with trials to be run by three Skills Organisation Pilots in Mining, Digital and Human Services. The trials are underway, testing design elements that were validated through consultations in early 2021.
To gather stakeholder feedback, the Qualifications Design Survey ran from December 2020 to February 2021. The survey demonstrated strong support for the concepts being tested through the trials, with 89% of respondents supporting the design elements.

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To understand how industry and employers can better engage in the vocational education and training (VET) system, Skills Reform recently consulted stakeholders about what they need and expect from the national training system, and how a future system should work. Overall, there is widespread support to enhance industry’s role in the VET system, with recognition that a shift in the role requires a new model. Findings have been summarised under five key areas of focus.

1. Broader role of industry
2. Improving collaboration across industry groups
3. Improving representation
4. Training package development
5. Training package approval

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This research summary explores the vocational qualification development processes in selected countries and compares them to the current process in Australia to determine if there are any areas where efficiencies can be made. In the Australian process, the role of educators and educational institutions in technical advisory groups and in qualification development appears, on paper, to be similar to international processes. However, greater transparency in how the contribution of each influences the outcomes may improve the current perception that they have little involvement.

REOS results in April 2021 suggest that the Australian labour market is tightening, with an increasing rate of recruitment and recruitment difficulty, and a slight increase in employers’ future staffing expectations. In April 2021, 49% of surveyed employers reported that they were recruiting or had recruited in the past month, which is a new peak, up from 46% in February and March 2021. Some 54% of recruiting employers reported recruitment difficulty in April 2021, a considerable increase on the 49% recorded in March 2021. This is a recent high in the recruitment difficulty series.

Read more.

The following training packages have been updated on training.gov.au:

• CPP: Property Services
  Revised 19th May 2021.
• AVI: Aviation
  Revised 25th May 2021.

Updates have been made to some Australian Apprenticeships and Traineeships Qualifications.

View.

This new series will focus on assessment validation – a key tool for providers seeking to get the best results from their assessment systems. This series is dedicated to online content exploring assessment validation, including regulatory requirements, benefits, planning and conducting validation and process insights.

Register here.

Digital skills are a vital and growing area of interest within the Australian skills landscape. The majority of workforce roles now require generic digital skills, and there are increasing needs to technical digital skills. A facilitated discussion will be held about the role that Australian Apprenticeships have in delivering the digital workforce of the future.

Register here.