in focus 14 june 2010
National Monday Update Issue:
Regulation, quality assurance & international engagement
Deciphering the bureaucratise of the Communiqué released by Education and Training Ministers following this week’s MCTEE meeting, the key outcomes were:
- The establishment of a National VET Regulator has moved one step closer to reality
- Education and training Ministers have noticed a downturn in international enrolments, and
- despite some obvious flaws in the structure of AQTF 2010 there are now agreed transition arrangements for key elements.
The Commonwealth will push ahead with the development of a national VET regulator without participation from Victoria or Western Australia. ACPET has advocated national VET regulation for many years and whilst we don’t see this move as the panacea that will fully address the problem of spiralling compliance costs for RTOs seeking to deliver quality education we do see the introduction of a truly national regulator as a critical element. To this end we continue to meet regularly with politicians and policy makers at Commonwealth and state level to push for an end to the current impasse.
While the true meaning of certain conditions and standards within AQTF 2010 remain opaque, ACPET is pleased that our calls for sensible transition arrangements for Condition 5 (Financial Management) and Condition 6 (AVETMISS compliance) have been heeded. The original March deadline for compliance with these conditions has now been extended by 9 months to January 2011. It is hoped that by the end of June, RTOs will receive definitive guidance on the evidence required to meet new standards that are to be implemented on 1 July. A series of workshops are being planned but in the absence of final advice, we will not be able to launch these until next month.
A concerted ACPET campaign to educate state and territory Ministers about the devastating effect that a continued decline in international student enrolments is having on local economies has had an impact. Following our story in last weekend’s print media and a string of follow ups in national press and electronic media during this week, the Ministerial Council agreed that an immediate assessment of the “implications of market changes in international education would be undertaken.” .
Regulatory and quality arrangements for higher education were also discussed and it was decided that AUQA will continue operations until the new regulatory arrangements are fully implemented and that AUQA will take a more risk based approach to its program of audits leading up to the establishment of TEQSA.
Other matters addressed in the Communiqué included:
- Access & participation
- Workforce development, supply & demand
- Data & performance measurement
- The skills for sustainable growth package
Response to our Private Education Industry Survey has been overwhelming, as a result we are extending the survey deadline to Friday 18 June. This survey is critical to our efforts to effectively represent the full extent of private training and higher education. I urge any member who has not yet completed this brief survey to do so this week. For further information contact ben [dot] vivekanandan [at] acpet [dot] edu [dot] au (Ben Vivekanandan) or visit http://www.acpet.edu.au/industry-advocacy/private-education-industry-survey.
Please do not hesitate to contact me (Andrew [dot] Smith [at] acpet [dot] edu [dot] au (click to email )Andrew [dot] Smith [at] acpet [dot] edu [dot] au (Andrew Smith)) to discuss any of the above or to provide your ideas and input into the ongoing development of the Council.