Who is in charge of VET in Australia?
March 16, 2018 7 Comments
My good friend Marc from the famous MRWED made a comedic comment on one of my posts recently, which when I starting to think about it drove something home to me. His little joke got me to thinking about a very serious question, ‘Who is in charge of VET in Australia?’
I challenge you all right now to answer that question. It should be easy shouldn’t it, shouldn’t we as professionals within the sector be able to say who is in charge, who is the person that speaks for the sector, who makes sure it actually works?
How many of you said either Minister Birmingham, or Assistant Minister Andrews, the COAG industry and Skills council perhaps, the Australian industry and skills committee maybe. Is it Michele Bruniges or Subho Banerjee (They are the secretary and deputy secretary of the Federal Department of Education if you weren’t aware) or perhaps the various State based ministers or departments?
Ah, stuff it, I give up. It is just too difficult!
Seriously though, just thinking about this hurts my head and clearly between all of the Ministers and committees, and departments, there is no one single person who is actually responsible for the oversight of the VET system in this country. In addition there is no one person whose role it is to promote and advocate the sectors interests, not the interests of TAFE (TDA and AEU) or of private providers (ACPET), or enterprise providers (ERTOA), but the interests of the sector and if the person is supposed to be doing this advocating and promoting is some one from the federal department they are doing a particularly shoddy job of it. The various ministers and political spokespeople for all of various parties often talk a big game, but also all to often their rhetoric is tinged by political ideology and agendas rather than by what is good for the sector.
Why can’t we have a Chief Vocational Education and Training Officer, someone whose job it is, is to look after the sector, make sure it works, manage all of the conflicting parts and promote and advocate for and on behalf of the sector, even if all they did was promote and advocate for the sector that would nearly be enough. Because the longer the sector is managed by committees, faceless bureaucrats (with no background in the sector) and an endless array of ministers who usually change at least every 3 years, until it stops being a political football, used by some to pursue their own ideological viewpoints we will continue to see it flop from one disaster to another and for someone who is passionate about the value of the VET sector I find that a really shame.