Call for VET, unis to face future together

More integration between higher education and vocational education is needed to develop the high-level skills workers need.

TAFES will be a key part of training workers for the skills they need in the future.

More integration between higher education and vocational education is needed to develop the high-level skills workers will need to deal with automation, a report from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research says.

Titled The Fourth Industrial Revolution: the implications of technological disruption for Australian VET, the report said greater integration would help to build both the hard technical skills and the soft skills needed in the so-called fourth industrial ­revolution. However it noted that achieving this was difficult.

“While there have been calls for closer integration between the VET (vocational education and training) and university sectors, this may be more easily said than done,” the report said.

The four authors — researchers Pi-Shen Seet of Edith Cowan University and Janice Jones, John Spoehr and Ann-Louise Hor­dacre of Flinders University — say in the report there is also a shortage of specialised trainers needed to train students in the skills needed for the fourth industrial revolution, which is based on artificial intelligence and automation technologies.

The first three industrial revolutions were based on steam, electricity and oil, and digital com­puters respectively. The fourth revolution is often abbreviated as Industry 4.0.

“No one at TAFEs, no one at universities is teaching the stuff that’s needed to be known at the moment,” one manager told the researchers. The manager said many lecturers at technical and further education colleges and universities were not across the most up-to-date information in their areas.

A number of managers in firms interviewed told researchers that trainers and teachers needed to do fast-track training “to acquire the necessary knowledge and understanding of Industry 4.0”.

Another barrier was the system of “training packages” — the agreed curriculums for training young people in various industries — which were found to be too inflexible and unable to be changed fast enough to meet new needs in disruptive technologies.

The NCVER report said there could be a role for rapid “micro- credentialling” courses that could deliver more flexible, just-in-time education.

It found employers also had a strong need for people with soft skills such as creativity, teamwork, problem-solving and continuous learning, and these were “integral to the uptake and ­implementation of disruptive technologies”.

“These are essential for preparing workers to be flexible and to cope with the rapid changes in the future workplace,” the report said. It also noted soft skills were uniquely human, and not easily replicable by machine.

It said that the new Industry 4.0 Industry Reference Committee announced this year by the Australian Industry and Skills Committee would help vocational educators shift attention to ­future-focused skills.

The committee’s job is to work with industry to identify the competencies students will need in ­future, such as big data, automation, digital skills and cyber-­security.

The report also praised the AISC for working on a range of industries to move beyond a siloed approach to skills, and to develop cross-industry skill sets and ­qualifications.

However, the NCVER report found no evidence of fully automated production processes being introduced that would cause major job losses. Instead, it found workers operating alongside new disruptive technologies, such as 3D printing, and this was requiring them to acquire new, high-level skills.

It said the picture was complex, with workers in some areas likely to be displaced.

The VET sector faced a “significant challenge”, it said.

Another research paper issued this week, by Hugh Guthrie, at the University of Melbourne’s LH Martin Institute, and Berwyn Clayton, of Victoria University, also called for VET reform, saying: “VET policymaking at present is in the hands of officials who lack contextual knowledge, especially of the VET system and how it actually works.”

They said the sector suffered from too-fast policy changes that led to “incomplete implementation and change fatigue” and a “critical lack of effective policy analysis, program monitoring and evaluation”.

The authors called for a comprehensive review of vocational education and training along the lines of the seminal Kangan review of the 1970s, and the creation of an agency similar to the Australian National Training Authority, which was closed in 2005.