Articles

Article 1:	Transition time -best of both worlds (Adobe PDF download)
Article 2:	Skills shortages in manufacturing
Article 3:	Training for bottom-line performance
Article 4	Group Training Scheme
Article 5:	Will she be right in ten years time?
Article 6:	Skills shortages in the building and construction trades
Article 7:	Free market threatens group training networks
Article 8:	Letter to the Editor of Campus Review
Article 9:	Crossroads and Challenges - Campus Review  8 September 2004

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ARTICLE 6
Skills shortages in the building and construction trades

If nothing is done to address the issue of skills shortages effectively, Australia will be facing a permanent shortage across a range of trades.

Sydney gained a glimpse of the problem in 2000, with the double whammy of the one-off Olympics building boom, combined with the rush by homeowners to finish their building and renovation projects before the GST came into effect.

More recently a consequence of the infrastructure construction activity in Gladstone (QLD) has been a migration of tradespeople from Bundaberg, to its south, with insufficient tradespeople to replace them. Industry bodies are concerned that apprenticeship levels within the building and construction industry have not increased over the past five years to match the number of trained workers leaving the industry (according to a Federal Government National Industry Skills Initiative, of those qualified in the trades, 30 percent are now working in non-trade occupations).

To say that the shortage is just about wages or working environment is not necessarily addressing the issue. The major reasons for the slump in apprenticeship numbers are:

• lack of understanding within education sector
• Insufficient support for prevocational training
• Perceived low wages and job insecurity
• Poor image and status of apprenticeships
• Insufficient support for reskilling and upskilling exsisting employees
• Lack of employer awareness of the commercial benefits of training
• Growth in casual employment due to outsourcing and contracting-out
• Short-term business planning and pressure for quick commerical returns
• Increased privatisation leading to reduction in apprenticeship recruitment – (government sector were traditionally the largest employer of apprentices).
  

The challenge is not only to encourage young people to take on a skilled trade but also to retain and motivate those already on the job.

Cradle to the grave
Graham Cuthbert, CEO of Queensland Master Builders Association, advocates a ‘cradle to the grave’ system of training. This requires a consistent system of training that will allow people to move smoothly and progressively from apprenticeship to supervisor, foreman, site manager, project manager and so on.

"The building and construction industry does not have one consistent and formalised progressive training relationship that addresses both promotion and pay scale, and we are working very hard on trying to address that." he says. (Currently the majority of training is informal and provided ?on-the-job?, and formal staff training, isn’t given the real support it deserves.)

Jim Barron, managing director of Group Training Australia, agrees. "There needs to be a formal career path, that includes both regular up-skilling and cross-skilling, to help make the trades a more attractive career option and help motivate those already on the job," he states.

Training for bottom-line performance
Many businesses don’t have the resources to let people attend training during working hours, or have trouble justifying the costs, and these factors limit the commitment to formal training.

"The problem with the building and construction industry, it is insecure and project-by-project based. Prices rise and fall in line with supply and demand and during boom periods, when prices are highest, sub-contractors are too busy to train anyone. But when the industry is quiet and prices are lowered, sub-contractors say they can’t afford an apprenctice," Cuthbert says, while advocating that the industry adjusts its pricing to allow for training regardless of industry activity levels.

Steve Balzary, Director of Education and Training, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry believes that a business which factors staff development into its planning is likely to enjoy increased staff retention.

He also notes that businesses are spending 'quite a bit of money' on staff development across the board, but not on formal accredited training.

Educating the educators
Barron believes that a different approach is required from schools and TAFEs including changed attitudes from careers advisors. "The school system must embrace the idea that a pathway in to an apprenticeship or a traditional trade is just as rewarding as a pathway in to higher education or to a ‘new economy’ trade." he says.

Alternative employment solution
Employers can be unwilling to commit to training an apprentice for four years because of the cyclical nature of the industry, difficulties in terminating apprentices who are not working out and the wasted cost if an apprentice leaves.

A good alternative for employers reluctant to indenture their own apprentices is to go through a Group Training Organisation (GTO). These indenture the apprentice on the employers’ behalf, organise formal training, look after paperwork and sort out the wages , and can find alternative placements for the apprentices if they do not work out.

Article by Christine Gill

Reprinted from Construction Contractor, May 2003, Volume 18, Number 4
Reed Business Information – www.reedbusiness.com.au & www.infolink.com.au

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Article 7
Free market threatens group training networks

FREE-MARKET ideology is threatening to destroy grouptraining networks according to a recent report from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research.

The authors of Creating markets or decent jobs? argue that future reform will “profoundly affect the nature of group training in the future”.

“If vocational education and training policy continues on its current trajectory, the network of group training organisations, which are delivering efficiency and equity benefits, will be destroyed,” the report says.

“The more this market continues to open, the greater the need for group training because the network brings particular and unique qualities to the training and employment of apprentices and trainees,” said chief executive of Group Training Australia (GTA), James Barron.

Group training involves training companies employing apprentices or trainees and placing them with host employers for job training. It needs policy that encourages sustainable forms of service work rather than degraded jobs that offer little prospect of career progression, the authors say.

This can be achieved by group training networks sharing the risks of employment and skill formation, enforcing publicly defined standards and providing counselling, preplacement and support to employees.

The report says market forces are placing at risk the benefits group training organisations (GTOs) bring to the Australian workforce. Increased competition between GTOs will mean those organisations that offer cheaper, but not necessarily better, services will survive. This will come at the cost of quality training across the network as a whole and will foster the growth of rogue operators who undercut the market and erode standards.

“In short, the reality will be that noted by John Stuart Mill: under conditions of competition standards are set by the morally least reputable agent,” the report says.

The authors argue state intervention is required to maintain a “practical vocational ethic” and pastoral care.

Barron agreed, saying state and Commonwealth funding has been static at $20 million for seven years and that there needs to be a “fundamental underpinning to investment in group training”.

This call for funding was justified because “you can’t continue to ask group training organisations to do more and more for less and less”.

GTOs were being asked to deliver more in equity areas such as indigenous, disability and other disadvantaged groups: “Those areas clearly are resource intensive and GTOs already provide substantial outcomes in these areas in comparison to other employers. But we believe that is not being acknowledged in increased funding.”

Barron said that while families were at the centrepiece of this week’s federal budget, group training provided essential services to the community that families would also benefit from.

He said that while he had not expected any major funding for training in the budget, there is now a heightened need for an announcement between now and the federal election.

“We have national skills shortages across all those areas where families expect service delivery so it’s great to give them tax cuts but they also need to be assured they’re going to have services provided to them,” he said.

“Group training needs to be acknowledged as a central component of any response in the skills shortages area.”

Federal Education Minister Dr Brendan Nelson has publicly supported the trend towards a competitive training market, saying user-choice and flexibility are key to training market reform.

The report says competition between GTOs is needed to prevent complacency, but this must not come at the expense of quality training. It argues future policy need take neither a “pro” nor “anti” market approach. “Rather, the choice is whether markets are seen as an objective to be promoted or a constraint within which people, institutions and policies have to operate.”

The paper flags the concept of “standards for flexibility” whereby companies that are susceptible to difficult market conditions can preserve standards through measures such as three-month apprenticeships or guarantees that if an apprentice unexpectedly loses placement with an employer, the GTO will offer offthe-job training in their own skills centre.

Article by Megan Johnston
Reproduced courtesy of Campus Review

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ARTICLE 8
Letter to the Editor of Campus Review
Letter to the Editor – from Jim Barron, CEO, Group Training Australia
(Responding to Campus Review June 30 – July 6, 2004 page 10)


In her article “Arguing with the doom and gloom merchants” Dr Erica Smith is right to restate the fact that Australia has one of the better training systems in the world and that there are record numbers undergoing traineeships and apprenticeships. She is however wrong to dismiss those, who, like me, are deeply concerned about the deepening skill shortage in this country as being little more than “doom and gloom merchants”.

According to the Government’s own keeper of the skill statistics, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, Australia has national skill shortages across all key trade areas. Commonwealth Training Minister Nelson recently launched a national strategy to deal with growing skill shortages. Is Dr Smith accusing the Commonwealth of being merchants of “doom and gloom”? Dr Smith’s quoting of a ream of impressive NVCER statistics does little to address the reality of national skill shortages. They are of little comfort to the many group training organisations across the country that are struggling to fill hundreds of vacancies in the trades. They are of little help in dealing with the poor image of the trades. They have had little impact on school systems that continue to promote a university option over an apprenticeship. They have certainly had no impact when it comes to creating a “training culture” in this country. And they certainly do nothing to help us develop a high skill, high wage, high value-add economy which will only be done on the back of a vibrant manufacturing sector, in turn reliant on increasingly skilled workers who have been trained in many of the traditional trades.

Statistics are all well and good. But trotting them out in an attempt to blunt the severity of our national skill shortage problem is a reminder that the appropriate policy response should not be the preserve of the academic nor the statistician. There is more to this than just cold hard numbers.


Jim Barron
CEO, Group Training Australia

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ARTICLE 9
Crossroads and Challenges - Campus Review  8 September 2004

At the beginning of a federal election campaign, it is not uncommon for thoughts of "wish lists" to emerge. Yes of course we want increased government investment, enhanced political status for training and greater school sector interaction with VET, amongst other things. Yet high up on the GTA list would be to also effectively deal with the "federation" of VET ie. the Commonwealth/State "gridlock" that often afflicts VET policy and politics and which I believe has been to the detriment of the national training effort.

The questions are obvious: Is VET best served by 9 different jurisdictional masters? Is a genuine national VET system possible? Are national training policy objectives helped or hindered under the current system? 

Despite the concerted push for national consistency from the Australian National Training Authority (ANTA), pretty much since it's inception way back in 1992, VET continues to dance to nine different tunes. The rail gauge effect is well and truly in play. Key national policies critical to delivering high skill, high quality outcomes, to engendering a national training culture and to dealing with on-going skills shortages are often retarded by jurisdictional politics and bureaucratic barriers. School Based New Apprenticeships, VET in Schools, User Choice, School to Work Pathways and Structured Workplace Learning are but a few examples.

In essence, we have a federated 'dogs breakfast' where progress is often measured at glacial pace. It seems to me that anyone contemplating a bold national agenda is quickly reminded that "sorry, that's not the way we do things here". Roadblocks suddenly appear. Vision and urgency confront the crushing reality of timid, benign, bureaucratic leadership. Please understand I am no commonwealth centrist advocating for the abolition of the States, far from it. Nor am I decrying the exceptional efforts of tens of thousands in the VET sector. However, I do believe that our commonwealth and state leaders must start to seriously examine the issue of where best, responsibility for vocational education and training should ultimately lie. Commonwealth/State relations will be one of the next big political and policy challenges for future governments. VET should be the first to be put under the microscope.

Whilst this examination is taking place, something else should be happening as well. That something else would be to successfully "politicise" VET. For too long the VET agenda has been more under the control of the bureaucrat than that of the politician. Whilst schools and universities have had no trouble being on the radar screen of political leaders, the same cannot be said for VET. I believe the reason for this is simple: politicians long ago handed over "responsibility" for VET to the bureaucrat, effectively consigning it to an invisible, second citizen status. Moreover, to the "outsider", VET appears incredibly complex and full of incomprehensible acronyms, which in turn denies it any chance of political or media cachet.

Indeed, at my last count, there were some 700 different acronyms in operation across the eight state and territory jurisdictions as well as that of the commonwealth. Not exactly the right ingredients for keeping it simple in the marketing and media stakes! The complexity and overly institutional nature of much of VET remains a major threat to a healthy future and a big turn-off for many potential users and clients.

Vocational education and training in this country is at a genuine crossroads. On the one hand there is enormous activity and engagement in the community. A total of 1.7 million people cannot be wrong, surely? Indeed, the sheer size of the industry tends to make the uninitiated a tad overawed and unquestioning. Size really does matter.

Yet if we scratch the surface and get beneath the numbers game, we find a system still struggling to define and market itself, a system still struggling to attract proper levels of funding, a system forever groaning beneath the weight of nine territorial bureaucracies and most importantly a system still waiting for full and enthusiastic industry engagement.

Moreover, it is a system that now sits alongside the greatest national skill shortage this country has faced for many a decade.

VET policy in this country is critical to the futures of millions of Australians. Over the past decade in particular, it has enjoyed extraordinary growth, giving new opportunities to literally millions of Australians. But it could be even more potent, powerful and effective in national policy terms if questions regarding commonwealth/state structure, overall levels of investment and political ownership were put on the table and given a full and fair hearing. In this election campaign, I hope both sides of politics will be prepared to do just that.

More of the same might be the safe bureaucratic approach that the VET careerists would prefer for the future, but for those of us who feel it is time for the VET masters to embrace new approaches and new thinking, then clearly the "safe" option is simply unacceptable.

James Barron, CEO Group Training Australia
Reproduced courtesy of Campus Review