Professor Barney Glover AO, the Commissioner of Jobs and Skills Australia, recently addressed the National Press Club. His speech, entitled Skills success in Australia: Aligning need with know how, stressed “the urgent need for a more connected tertiary education system in this country.”

In particular he is “concerned with the vital need for better alignment between our tertiary education sectors. In the interests of connection, in the national interest, I believe we need to rebalance Australian post-secondary education.”

He notes that Australia already has a world class university sector and a high-quality VET system with great TAFEs. He points to the way that the tertiary sector already affords choices in pathways and the ability to up and reskill. “But we need to ensure those opportunities are more accessible, scalable and connected to meet the challenges ahead,” he says. (In passing, it’s likely that the proposed Skills Passport will have a role to play here and we will consider this more once the outcomes of the Government’s consultations are published, because it “could be a critical factor in promoting agility in the skills system.”)

We know that “post-secondary education greatly enhances employability. Unemployment rates for young people, (those aged 25-34), without Year 12 or any tertiary qualification are above 10 per cent. For those with a higher education that figure is just 3.5 per cent.”

There has also been a dramatic increase in post-school with the latest 2021 Census telling us that around “5.5 million reported having a bachelor’s degree or higher as their highest level of education. This is a staggering 31 per cent increase since 2016.” However, “just on 4 million people reported having certificate I to IV as their highest level of education, which is only a 11 per cent increase since 2016.” So, is the system lacking balance?

Furthermore, Glover points out that “compared to 2011, the number of people with a bachelor’s degree or higher has grown 67%, whereas the Certificate I to IV group has grown only 25%. The system clearly needs rebalancing” and thus “we must reduce the discrepancy between where students are studying now and the job requirements of the future,” he said.

JSA’s projections show that “90% of jobs growth in the next ten years will require post-secondary education with 44% requiring a VET qualification and others requiring both VET and higher education,” Professor Glover told the Press Club’s audience.

In his address he also stressed the need for “expanded access to and involvement in tertiary education by First Nations people,” and, “equally, we need to dramatically lift access for those from low socio-economic backgrounds, people with a disability and from regional and remote areas.”

He also pointed to persistent skill shortages, often a factor of the gendered nature of some occupations, “suitability gaps between the skills of recent graduates and the needs of industry” and “retention gaps driven by occupations with relatively poor employment conditions, remuneration or workplace cultures.

He says that now, “at every opportunity I … extoll the virtues of innovation and creativity in our TAFE system. I do the same with respect to the system’s approach to industry engagement” also noting that partnerships between industry and education and training providers are essential in developing and codesigning courses and programs.

“The new TAFE Centres of Excellence in priority areas such as EVs, clean energy, care industries and early childhood are being planned on this basis of partnership,” he said. (Readers will know we have highlighted the 4 Centres of Excellence established so far in these pages.) But he also highlighted degree level apprenticeships as another way forward.

Importantly, he pointed out that:

“We must uplift the aspirations of young people to consider career options across the full tertiary spectrum. I’ll be blunt we need to raise enthusiasm – in numbers too big to ignore – for vocational education and training from deep within our school system.” And, as we have also highlighted in these pages before, this requires high quality and unbiased careers advice and greater moves towards parity of esteem across the tertiary sector.

Finally, in this wide-ranging speech, he points to the

“need to brace ourselves for new models, not only, of delivering skills training and higher education but also in the shape and flexibility of the qualifications themselves. Upskilling and reskilling will require more flexible and modular credentials available and delivered just-in-time through a variety of modalities.”

So, qualifications reform is very much in the frame.