By Michael Cooney
This paper argues that the case for reforming vocational education and training in Australia is strong.
Training is important to wider social and economic policy questions – but it is not done well enough at the moment and this needs to change.
The Victorian and Federal Governments are making big changes, which represent real potential progress.
The demand-side proposals hold real promise. The best argument will deal with the supply-side consequences, especially for existing public providers.
The challenges for governance, workforce, infrastructure are real and the policy needs to evolve rapidly and effectively to take a sophisticated account of these challenges without compromising the benefits of a demand-side approach.
The key is integration of these different objectives into a well designed solution – not balancing these different objectives with competing solutions.
