Recent Vocational Education and Training (VET) policy shifts are challenging long established VET systems and programs. This paper reports on research into considered issues and challenges to VET and its future, from the perspective of recent policy changes in Australia, with particular attention to the state of Victoria. In Victoria, a rapid ‘destatalisation’ (Ball, 2007) is reinforcing the private over the public sector VET within a neo – liberal framework. This term ‘destatalisation’ is employed to frame the study, referring to the redrawing of the public – private divide, with education subordinate to structural competitiveness and state education re- articulated in ways which shift economic problems to being social problems, and the welfare state to a focus on the individual (Ball, 2007, pp. 9 – 10)
The Australian research is relevant to Europe and beyond. Recent policy shifts serve as an indication and prediction, and potentially warnings, for changes in international VET policy. The VET sector is often presented as a catchall panacea to provide highly skilled workforces to support national productivity and international economic competitiveness. However, a policy disconnect divorces such goals from the context of global financial economic crises, rising unemployment and concerns for budget deficits. National and international agendas for development of skilled workers exist in parallel with economic crises with increasing gaps between rich and poor and increasing unemployment, multinational organisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange and destatization, deregulation, privatisation and marketisation of the education and training (Ball, 2007).
In this scenario of diminished economic viability, a major international concern is youth unemployment. European countries generally have high youth unemployment, with Spain at 46%, Greece at 44%, the UK at 23% and Germany, 9% (Lanning and Rudiger, 2011). The USA is reported at 17%. In a population of 21.3m, Australia, had 470,000 in apprenticeships and traineeships nationally, with 122,000 in Victoria. At the same time, youth unemployment at 17% (and higher in some regions) for 15 – 19 year olds, remains steadily higher than the national average of 5.3%, for Australia (Kwek, 2013).
In Victoria, numbers of training providers increased (33%), enrolments increased (44%), as did training hours (68%) (NSSC, 2013, p.2). This burgeoning publically funded VET sector has been cut severely in financial allocations by the government which emphasises sustainability and a well trained job ready workforce with training to be encouraged in growth areas. Courses and campuses have closed, staff made redundant, and preference for a casualised workforce, increasing privatisation, proliferation of small private Registered Training Organisations and marketisation of the VET sector established (NSSC, 2013).
It is this contested context, a time of crisis for VET, that has been explored and is reported in this paper.
The key research question explored through a set of interviews with a sample of practitioners in the VET field in the state of Victoria was:
‘What are the perceptions of the recent policies in Australian VET with a specific consideration of the Victorian policy agenda.’
Participants were asked in semi structured interviews the following:
- What do you identify as significant policy aspects for VET in your state, nationally and internationally
- How would you describe and critique the development and delivery of recent VET policy initiatives
- What impacts have you observed in the implementation of these policies
- How do these fit in the tertiary education sector
- How would you rate these in terms of:
Quality
Professional development
Professionalism and
Pedagogy
- Where is the learner situated in these policy developments
- What are the key challenges and opportunities for VET currently and in future
- Other issues or points to contribute
