The Interim Report on the Review of the National Agreement for Skills and Workforce Development (NASWD) was released last week by the Productivity Commission, highlighting that the agreement is overdue for replacement.
The NASWD identifies the long term objectives of the Australian Government and State and Territory Governments in the areas of skills and workforce development.
The Productivity Commission report follows Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business, Michaelia Cash, announcing a review of the NASWD to broadly examine the effectiveness of the National Agreement and options for future collaborative arrangements across the sector.
In response, the PC said its report reflected “the consensus in 2012 about how Australian, State and Territory governments should boost participation in training — including creating a national training entitlement, promoting ‘user choice’ led competition, and expanding access to income contingent loans”.
“However, governments have stepped back from some of its policy aspirations. Targets have not been met and the performance indicators have proved to be deficient.”
It also detailed how there is a manifest capacity to better allocate the $6.1 billion in governments’ spending on VET to improve outcomes.
“Governments should consider reforms to make the VET system a more efficient, competitive market, driven by the informed choices of students and employers, with the flexibility to deliver a broad suite of training options,” the report said.
“This goal should be pursued through a new principles-based agreement. This study proposes a set of principles for such an agreement.”
Based on these principles, some reform directions are clear, the report said, including:
- supporting effective competition in service delivery by establishing clear, contestable community service obligations
- better data collection and transparent, comprehensive reporting of the allocation of public funds to support regular assessment of governments’ policies
- better curated information for students and employers about career opportunities, the performance of registered training organisations (RTOs), course quality and prices reform of course pricing
- a single national regulator.
The report said various options existed for reforms to VET funding, which will require further consultation and assessment, with reform options including:
- expanding access to VET Student Loans by relaxing loan caps and course and qualification restrictions, underpinned by strong risk management. This may be a preferred option to any
additional subsidies - simpler subsidy arrangements, such as:
– Binding arrangements on all governments to apply a nationally-consistent set of course subsidies, based on the efficient cost of delivery, with loadings to address higher delivery costs in some locations and to some student groups, or
– Replacing the proliferation of granular subsidy rates for courses with a limited range of subsidy rates, but otherwise leaving jurisdictions to set their own subsidy levels and allocation - using student vouchers instead of subsidy payments to RTOs to facilitate user choice
- moving away from, or complementing, incentives to employers to train apprentices by using other approaches to support apprentices, including mentoring and pastoral care
In the report’s final key point it highlighted that regardless of the extent to which State and Territory governments adopt a common national approach to subsidies, there are strong grounds for them to use common methods to measure costs and determine loadings.
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, of which AMMA is a member, said the review ignores the most significant issue facing vocational training being the lack of consistency and growth in overall VET funding.
“The PC report puts a welcome and timely focus on the VET system which is so important to our economy and productivity,” ACCI CEO James Pearson said.
“However, we are disappointed that it does not draw attention to the lack of success the National Agreement has had in delivering overall growth and funding consistency for VET. Over the last eight years we have seen a decline in the number of apprenticeships, and more recently a decline in the number of students publicly funded to undertake VET qualifications.”
修改评论