looking beyond myskills website

Which training providers are not afraid of the MySkills website, asks John Mitchell.

The following article featuring Terry Richards, CEO of the Australian College of Training recently appeared in Campus Review.

ACPET thanks Dr John Mitchell and Campus Review for permitting ACPET to publish the article in its entirity.

Following the media profile given to the MySchool website, there was no sense of public surprise when the Government announced in the budget that it would allocate $4.1 million over four years to establish and maintain a website, MySkills, to provide information to users of the vocational education and training system.

The budget papers noted that the website will support skills development through the provision of comprehensive information on vocational education and training. “This will assist students and businesses identify and choose appropriate training options and increase the transparency within the sector”.

The website will provide performance information on registered training organisations (RTOs) obtained from employers and students, data on the level of commencements and completions and a description of the training provided by different RTOs.

While training providers may take some time to digest the implications of these inclusions, the head of one of the national award-winning providers, the Australian College of Training which has its headquarters in Perth, is more focused on using data not collected by the MySkills website.

Terry Richards, CEO of this company that was a finalist in the WA Small Training Provider in four of the last five years, is thinking a long way past the passive approach to displaying data on the MySkills site.

“We are actually launching a new electronic system in early July which will substantially increase our data right down to knowing how long a trainer spends with each student and how long they spend on each worksite,” said Richards.

“This is extremely detailed data that isn’t currently available, but it is how we will use that data that is important.

“At the moment we collect pretty much similar data to any other RTO but what we do in addition is a lot of data analysis. For example we’ll measure completion rates versus frequency of visits from trainers to see whether we need to have more frequent visit rate to get better completion rates.”

Richards also uses the student achievement data to review internal processes. “We’ll collect data on the actual progress of students and sites in terms of commencements or completions. We will then use that information to determine a lot of our internal processes, for example whether paperwork’s been presented, whether trainers are up to date on their paperwork, whether students are progressing at correct levels.”

“We feel that there’s a direct correlation between our digital information and the efficiency of our organisation.”

Most of all Richards is focused on using data to improve student completion rates. “We’ll be able to measure, based on their time taken, how far students are progressed and what’s their likelihood of completion on time. Sometimes we can’t do anything about it but where we can we certainly try to get early intervention.”

Commercial sensitivities

Understandably, Richards views much of this data as commercially sensitive and therefore inappropriate for the MySkills website. “Information that may not be appropriate for public use is information, for example, about how many of our training resources were required per employer.”

But such information may be made available to his valued clients. “For some employers where we visit their multiple sites, we’ll give them the benchmarked information between their sites so they can see which sites are more advanced in their training than others.”

Other information Richards would not want displayed on the MySkills website is detailed data about his staff input, which he is about to start collecting. “Our new electronic system is about complete digital workflows, and we’ll be able to monitor the total contact time of staff with students, total contact with individuals, time spent on each site. And I suppose the benefit of that approach is that we can see whether we are best placing our resource.”

While others may be more concerned about the intrusion of MySkills into their businesses, Richards is looking beyond it, to the competitive benefits of digital information. “This next step we’re going to make in July with our digital workflows we believe is not only going to put us a huge jump ahead of the rest of the industry, but it’s also going to significantly change the way we deliver our service, to the point where it’s going to give us enormous competitive advantage.”

“We’re quite heavy on technology in terms of our IT. We’ve been trying to do things that organisations might do with a $2m IT budget. We haven’t got that kind of money, but we’re getting smarter and better and more knowledgeable about how to do that.”

	Contact terry [dot] richards [at] auscollege [dot] com [dot] au (Terry Richards) and see http://www.auscollege.com.au/
	Dr John Mitchell leads an analytics company. See www.jma.com.au/jmaanalytics.aspx