National Skills Commission has listened and is ready to roll

The new National Skills Commission (NSC) has taken the first steps to identifying its priority objectives, following a four-month stakeholder consultation.

The NSC has released a paper, ‘This is what we heard’ summarising the outcome of the consultations.

“There was widespread and consistent support across stakeholder groups for a mechanism that would revitalise leadership of VET,” the paper said.

“Different stakeholders proposed that the NSC provide strategic leadership across a broad range of areas, including VET policy, standards, funding and pricing, and improving linkages with other education sectors.”

The paper said there was also strong support for the NSC to lead an economy-wide focus on skills and workforce development, rather than just a focus on qualifications “which would limit capacity to consider other learning approaches such as micro-credentials, non-accredited training and informal learning.”

“The focus on skills was also identified as the enabler to address the long-standing challenges in the sector including quality, training products, apprenticeship regulation and overall investment,” it said.

The consultation included 13 workshops attended by more than 500 people, 35 individual consultations with sector leaders, round-tables with small and medium employers, and 59 submissions to a discussion paper.

Read more and download the paper.

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