Contesting Competence as Australia enters another Round of Training Reform.
Ian Hampson and Anne Junor
The University of New South Wales
Paper Prepared for the 28th International Labour Process Conference
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
15-17 March, 2010
Since the late 1980s the Australian vocational education and training system has
gone through successive waves of reform, in an effort to create a quality system
offering national vocational qualifications. Each reform round has been a
response to a ‘quality crisis’ in a system marked by jurisdictional fragmentation,
competing employer agendas, and (since 1996) marginalisation of organised
labour from policymaking and governance. These waves are summarised, and
issues arising from reliance on competency based training and assessment in the
context of market-oriented training reform are analysed. Resulting difficulties are
illustrated in two 2009 initiatives: the attempt to create a new internationallyharmonised qualifications framework, and the development of a framework for
recognising workplace learning. Both initiatives grappled with definitions of skill
level and with ways to incorporate ‘informal’ and ‘non-formal’ learning and socalled ‘generic’ or ‘employability’ skills into qualifications. Drawing on theories
of workplace learning and work process knowledge, the authors’ own researchbased conceptualisation of ‘skills of experience’ (Hampson and Junor, 2010,
forthcoming) is used to suggest that training outcomes need to be understood in a
context of the organisation of the labour process. The problem of defining the
exact nature of human capacity that is the object of skills development, and
building that into recognition structures, is a problem that confronts any national
training system: how it is resolved is determined by the relative power of the
social partners.
Introduction
Since 1987, there have been successive Australian attempt to shape a National Training system,
out of a state-segmented pattern of funding, regulation and training delivery, within the
fragmenting tendencies of a liberal market model. Each reform period was triggered by fears of
skill shortages and by concerns over training quality and the integrity of vocational
qualifications. The paper backgrounds the most recent attempt, since 2007, to establish a national
training system. It argues that a system for the stable and ongoing generation and recognition of
high-level skills will require a change of employer orientation. For well over a decade, there has
been a marginalisation of the union vision of national capacity-building through skill-based
career paths. Rather than ‘growing’ skills, employers have relied on recruiting a mix of
contingent labour and ready-formed ‘talent’. Competency based training has tended to privilege
assessment over learning, as employers have sought to ‘buy in’, ready-made, both technical
skills, ‘employability’ skills – the capacity to function in the workplace that has become a
precondition for employment. Yet much of this is work process knowledge, acquired, often
collectively, in situated contexts (Lave and Wenger, 1990; Brown and Duguid, 1991; Boreham et
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al., 2002). Whilst welcoming present efforts to set up a national qualifications framework that
will regulate quality and assist workforce development through a stronger skills recognition
architecture, the paper argues that the new framework will fall short of clarity in conceptualising
skill levels, until ‘skills of experience’ are better defined.
The first section of the paper outlines, from an institutional and policy perspective, a succession
of efforts to forge a national VET system in Australia, and draws out the antecedents of the
present restructure, which is outlined in the second section. The third section highlights
theoretical difficulties within the concept of behavioural competence, and their practical
implications for the problem of assessment. The fourth section draws on the authors’ research
(Hampson and Junor, 2010) to suggest that there is still an inadequate classification of the
process skills currently referred to by terms such as ‘soft’ or ‘employability’, and also that there
is a need to differentiate two conceptualisations of skill level that are at present being run
together – occupational skill level and level of practical expertise. The fifth section is a critical
examination of how these difficulties have been addressed in new proposals for restructuring the
Australian Qualification Framework, and for recognising workplace learning. The concluding
section suggests that successful training reform will depend on a willingness by employers to
organise the labour process in a way that allows workers to develop autonomous and
collaborative skills, and to apply this learning in jobs and job sequences that draw on and build
this skill development.
Early Reforms: Development and Fragmentation of a National VET System in Australia
The Australian VET sector is located in the ‘varieties of capitalism’ literature at the ‘Anglo’ end
of ‘liberal market’ training systems, although Bosch and Charest (2010, p. 3) caution against too
functionalist a reliance on typologies, reminding us that Australia once had an apprenticeship
system in which unions had some influence. Cooney and Long (2010, p. 27-28) identify
‘segmentation’ as the defining characteristic of the Australian training system. Hampson and
Morgan (2009) use the terms ‘institutional ‘inadequacy’ and ‘decomposition’ to describe
Australia’s failure to develop a stable settlement around training policy. This has resulted from
three factors: structural features of Australia’s government; the strategies of Australia’s
employers and their organisations; and (particularly since 1996) the marginalisation of organised
labour from training regimes.
Development of a national approach to training policy and governance has been impeded by
jurisdictional competition. Australia’s federal system of government, has historically allocated
most power over training and education to five states and two territories states. Thus each state
has had its own Technical and Further Education (TAFE) system, and its own State Training
Authorities. Their sometimes very different approaches to training policy have hampered
national portability of qualifications. Still, since the 1980s state systems have been increasingly
reliant on federal funding, while ‘deregulation’ (market-based regulation) has resulted in an even
more fragmented, employer-led VET system (Cooney and Long, 2010, pp. 27-28). Employers
too have divided interests regarding training, as the structure of their interest representation
underscores. The 100 largest firms, mining and finance capital, are represented by the Business
Council of Australia (BCA), which has sought to preserve employer prerogatives over training.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) has a larger constituency of medium
to small capital more focussed on manufacturing, and dependent on the public training system.
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Before the 1980s, training was mainly built around the trades apprenticeship model, in which
young, usually male, apprentices served their time under tradesmen, usually unionised, and
attended technical colleges. Unions and the industrial relations system restricted trade entry and
helped regulate the quality and content of training and assessment. Awards (Australian industrial
instruments which regulate the conditions of work) preserved industrial demarcations along skill
based lines. Workplace training was often unsystematic, cursory and dangerous. In 1983 unions
entered into ‘corporatist’ arrangements for the first time, under an ‘Accord’ with the Australian
Labor Party (ALP), As economic liberalisation and ‘reform’ progressed through the 1980s and
the need for industrial dynamism became uppermost, three issues emerged. A genuinely national
qualifications structure was required, to support national labour mobility (OECD 1988). There
was a need to upskill workers to utilise new production concepts. With the growth of service
employment and increasing female employment, women and wage-restrained workers sought
skill recognition as a means of pay equity and upward labour market mobility.
By 1987 ‘Accord’ arrangements included negotiations for a ‘National Training Reform Agenda’
(NTRA) (Hampson, 1996). Unions proposed a national training fund, into which employers
would contribute, and draw from for structured training (ACTU/TDC, 1987). This was
subsequently implemented through a ‘training guarantee levy’, which was poorly supervised,
resisted and abused by employers, and abandoned in 1994. The NTRA included competencebased training as a central plank. Those who implemented it saw it in an industrial context as a
way of delivering skill-based wage rises and career ladders, without worrying about its
pedagogical implications (Ewer and Ablett, 1996). Qualifications would be awarded on the basis
of Competency Based Assessments of work performance to the level defined by industry
standards. They would be integrated across the economy through an Australian Standards
Framework (ASF), ensuring labour market mobility (Ewer et al., 1991, ch. 7). A new National
Training Board (NTB) would oversee this system, known as the National Framework for the
Recognition of Training (NFROT).
A nationally integrated training system did not, however, come to fruition. Large employers in
particular resisted and undermined the requirement to spend on training, and the incursions into
their prerogatives implied by union involvement in training. The NTB lacked the authority to
impose ‘national’ training requirements on recalcitrant state governments as well as on
employers. Moreover, after one important realignment of minimum rates in male and female
dominated industries in 1987, the industrial relations system itself fragmented: from 1991 unions
increasingly turned their attention to enterprise-based productivity bargaining (Ewer et al., 1991;
Junor, 1998).
Meanwhile high youth unemployment resulted in recommendations for a national system of
traineeships, designed to provide on and off the job entry-level training at the two lowest
qualification levels, articulating into higher-level training (Committee of Inquiry into Labour
Market Programs 1985). In the face of slow traineeship take-up and recession, there were
proposals in the early 1990s for universal vocational preparation based on pathways through
combinations of school, VET and employment. Seven key vocational competencies, were
proposed, defined at three levels (for example teamworking, problem-solving, communication)
(Employment and Skills Formation Council 1992). Meanwhile under ‘Working Nation’ policies.
employers were offered generous subsidies and the right to pay ‘training wages’ on condition
that they provided nationally-recognised ‘structured training’. In reality, this could be
‘supervised practice’, indistinguishable from cheap labour (Campbell, 1994, p. 15).
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The 1993 establishment of the Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) began a new
stage of national regulation. ANTA was governed by a Council of Ministers of Education,
Training, Employment and Youth Affairs from state and federal jurisdictions – a cumbersome
governance structure that was nevertheless necessary for managing inter-state rivalries After
1994, state TAFE systems competed for contestable federal funding with private ‘registered
training organisations’ (RTOs) – in-house or for-profit providers of training and assessment.
Emergence of this training market necessitated national regulation and quality assurance of
competency-based assessments and qualifications. Accordingly, the states agree to mutual
recognition of qualifications.
An employer-led, market-based national training system developed further from 1996 to 2007,
under a Liberal-National government. Industry Training Advisory Bodies (later, Industry Skills
Councils), which were increasingly employer-dominated, developed training packages. These
specified competency standards - statements of training outcomes, setting out required standards
of performance. They also identified qualifications to which the competency standards might
contribute. Finally, they included assessment guidelines. Thus training packages contained no
specific guidelines on learning and teaching. This role was delegated to the RTOs. Indeed some
private RTOs offered assessment services only. As the quality of both training and assessment
emerged as an issue, from 2000 ANTA used an Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF), in
endorsing the training packages.
The Liberal-National government created New Apprenticeships, negotiating with the states to
integrate traineeships and apprenticeships within the AQF and covering both by training
packages (Cooney and Long, 2010, p. 48). Between 1996 and 2003, traineeships grew by 300
per cent, reaching double the number of apprenticeships (Brooks, 2004). Whereas traineeships
had originally been envisaged as providing Certificate I and II level training as the basis for
labour market entry and further training, by 2003 they were taking the form of specialised,
sometimes organisation-specific, Certificate III qualifications, in fields such as transport and
storage, hospitality, retail, and health and community services. By 2003, of over 1.3 million total
VET enrolments inside the AQF, just under half were evenly divided between Certificate I-II and
Certificate III levels, and just over 20 per cent were evenly divided between Certificate IV (the
traditional tradesperson level) and Diploma level or higher (Cooney and Long, 2010, p. 39). By
2005, slightly more than half of all training contracts were held by women, and 20 per cent were
held by people aged 45 and over (Cully, n,d, but 2006, p. 24). Traineeships were not addressing
their original purpose: 15 per cent of 15-19 year olds were still outside full-time employment or
education.
Employers were significant beneficiaries of the 1996-2007 changes. By 2004, annual transfers of
public funds to an estimated value of $750 million were going to employers, through a
combination of incentive payments, wages bill savings (the training wage was below the
minimum wage), and access to ‘User Choice’ allowing them to negotiate arrangements with a
preferred RTO (Cully, n.d. but 2006, pp. 8, 13). A 1998 rule change allowed employers of
people already employed to claim government training incentive payments, and by 2003 onethird of traineeships were going to existing workers (Dumbrell, 2004, p. 13).
In this training market context, the AQF was used to secure a degree of national consistency
within each VET qualification, and also to differentiate qualification levels. But without a basis
in training duration or identification of required skill sets, it was hard to establish equivalence
across industry fields and education sectors. The number of AQF qualifications expanded from
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12 to 15, because of difficulties in aligning new qualifications with existing ones (Cooney and
Long, 2010, pp. 30-31).
Schofield, in reviewing traineeships in three states, found a number of strengths but also
significant problems with User Choice and shortfalls in employers’ and RTOs’ ‘legal and moral
obligations to apprentices and trainees’ (Schofield 2000, Vol. 1, p. v). High non-completion rates
were attributed to poorly supervised training, wholly on-the-job ‘training’, and exploitation
through excessive hours and unpaid overtime (Dumbrell, 2004, p. 22). Training access for
Australia’s large casual and contingent workforce remained a problem (Hall et al., 2000).
By 2000, the marketised system was beset by reports of system-rorting by some private RTOs
(non-existent facilities, sub-standard resources, visa scams, issuing of false qualifications),
brought to light in a Senate inquiry (SEWRSBERC, 2000; Schofield, 1999, 2000). The
politicisation of these concerns led the government in 2001 to reengineer the regulatory system
by creating an Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF), and introducing new quality
assurance standards for use by State Training Authorities in registering and auditing RTOs.
Ongoing problems with the integrity both of qualifications and of training provision led to the
establishment in late 2005 of a National Quality Council (NQC) as a committee of the federalstate Ministerial Council for Vocational and Technical Education (MCVTE). Bringing together
nominees from industry, unions, governments, equity groups and training providers, the NQC
had decision-making powers in the endorsement of Training Packages, and a wide quality
assurance advisory role.
Thus by late 2007, persistent concerns about quality, equity and coordination had arisen in the
Australian training system Nevertheless a series of high-level and OECD reviews had
reaffirmed the value of industry-developed, nationally recognised qualifications linked to the
AQF. This ultimate endorsement remained, even in a highly critical 2008 OECD ‘external’
review of the Australian training system. This review found that there were serious problems
with training packages. which had become ‘long and complex’, and were unable to be adjusted
quickly in response to occupational and industry change (Hoeckel et al, 2008). Thus even critical
reviews reaffirmed the role of training packages, provided they were reworked to recognise
shifting industry boundaries and reach people without jobs, and as long as they improved
pathways, and above all, were streamlined (Schofield and McDonald, 2004; Hoeckel et al.,
2008). In the first two years of the new Labor government (2008-2009), how have these concerns
been addressed?
Reform in Australia since 2007: A New Integration?
The new government has foreshadowed bold changes. The December 2008 Final Report of the
Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education recommended that the Australian government
assume full responsibility for the regulation of both VET and HE by 2010, with a common
regulatory and quality assurance agency covering both sectors (Bradley, 2008).
Beginning in 2008, steps to consolidating a real national system were taken, through new
governance structures and compacts with the states. In April 2008 COAG agreed to a new
Ministerial Council for Tertiary Education and Employment (MCTEE), covering both the VET
and Higher Education (HE) sectors, with the stated purpose of achieving better articulation
between the competency-based VET and merit-based HE systems. A renewal of active labour
market policy saw the development of compacts with young people and retrenched workers.
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Whilst market-oriented and industry-led logics remain, there was a renewed focus on the use of
nationally planned workforce development targets to address skills shortages, business cycles,
and productivity and equity objectives. These objectives were pursued in 2009-2010 through
National Partnerships based on the Productivity Places Program, and through a two-year $6.7 b.
National Agreement for Skills and Workforce Development. This was based on the Bradley 2020
target of halving the proportion of 20-64 year olds with qualifications below Certificate III, and
doubling diploma and advanced diploma completions.
The planning role was assigned to Skills Australia, a new statutory advisory body established by
legislation early in 2008. In March 2010 its Australian Workforce Futures: A National
Workforce Development Strategy, set six targets for building a skilled, sustainable and inclusive
workforce (Skills Australia, 2010). Skills Australia also tackled the long-running question of the
governance of a national training system. A September 2008 Discussion Paper, produced a flowchart of current structures (a slightly simplified version is reproduced as Figure 1), in order to
argue that ‘governance arrangements could currently be considered congested’ (Skills Australia,
2008, p. 6). A follow-up governance paper, Foundations for the Future (Skills Australia, 2009)
recommended the eventual merging into a new single regulator of the NQC and the National
Audit and Regulatory Agency (NARA, recently created to manage cross-jurisdictional quality
control). This was in line with the Bradley proposal for the gradual integration of the national
regulation of VET and HE, once consistent national frameworks are in place. It is too early to
say whether these proposals will address VET sector institutional ‘inadequacy’.
Figure 1 National Governance Arrangements for the Australian VET Sector, 2008
As if to illustrate Skills Australia’s claim of ‘congested’ governance structures, in 2008 and
2009, several players were addressing longstanding quality issues. In May 2008, the NQC,
working with a COAG Skills and Workforce Development Subgroup, began a Review of VET
Products for the 21st Century, which reported in mid-2009. Its terms of reference were to
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improve the design of units of competency, training packages, VET qualifications, accredited
systems and recognition. It began by addressing two very fundamental questions:


Whether the current approach to competence and its assessment was sufficient to satisfy
key workforce development objectives - filling gaps in foundation skills and equity
requirements, and meeting future skill needs;
The relevance of existing qualifications to diverse groups of learners and enterprises, and
whether they could be consistently and reliably assessed (NQC/COAG, 2009, pp. 10-12).
Further considerations were the incorporation of employability skills and the need for a greater
emphasis on cognitive skills (NQC/COAG, 2009, p.9). This working group acknowledged that a
second body – the new AQF Council - was also looking at the issue of skill-based pathways, and
suggested a joint approach (NQC/COAG, 2009, p. 17). In a separate 2008-2009 project, the
NQC also explored frameworks for the recognition of skills acquired outside formal education
and training. (NQC, 2009).
The main work on competency recognition and skill-based pathways was however being done by
the new body, the Australian Qualification Framework Council (AQFC). Established by the
Ministerial Council for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA)
specifically to advise on the architecture of the AQF, it contributed to the Bradley review goal of
an integrated regulatory framework for the tertiary sector. The centrality of the AQF to
integrated tertiary education regulation is suggested by the choice of AQFC chair - John
Dawkins, who had overseen the creation of a Unified National System of higher education,
during the ‘clever country’ days of the late 1980s.
The AQFC was charged with recommending a qualifications ‘architecture’ that would ensure
international harmonisation of qualifications, promote cross-sectoral recognition of
qualifications, and provide for recognition of informal and non-formal learning (including
workplace and professional learning). If lifelong learning was to be promoted via greater
connectivity and easier movement between the VET and HE systems, a common language of
human capacity and achievement needed to be developed. The VET sector relied on the language
of ‘competence’; the HE sector on levels of ‘knowledge’ expressed in degrees. VET was
vulnerable to the criticism that it sometimes failed to provide underlying knowledge; HE to the
criticism that its knowledge lacked application. Both were seeking a language to express ‘generic
skills’: ‘employability skills’ in VET, ‘graduate attributes’ in HE (AQFC, 2009a).
Thus competency, assessment practices, generic skills and skill recognition were under serious
scrutiny. The next two sections provide a brief overview of the issues, and the authors’ own
research-based approach to resolving them.
Disarray in Conceptualising and Implementing Competency, ‘Employability’ and
Assessment
Competence
Contested conceptions of ‘competence’ have been among the key drivers of training system
reviews. These conceptions have taking a cross-national dimension since the 2000 Lisbon
agreement sought the ‘harmonisation’ of skill recognition arrangements in a new European
Qualifications Framework (EQF) (Rauner, 2008; Sellin, 2007/2008). Despite differences in
prevailing notions of competence, in particular between Britain and Germany (Clarke and
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Winch, 2006), the Australian, US ‘Euro/German’ models have all recently experienced some
convergent rethinking (ACER 2001; Mulder et al., 2007). New conceptualisations of service skill
have contributed to a consensus that the concept of ‘competence’, and its assessment, need to
change.
From 2002-3 in Australia, it became clear that competence increasingly entailed a number of illdefined ‘soft skills’ (ANTA, 2004). This understanding was expressed through contested notions
of ‘employability skills’. In the UK, Labour Process theorists noted how employers were seeking
to build employee compliance into expanded definitions of skill (Warhurst et al, 2004). In this
section, we draw out the significance of debates, in each reform phase, over the balance between
observed performance and more tacit processes of learning, cognition, interaction and work
organisation in defining performance standards and assessing competency.
We begin the Australian account with the adoption, in the late 1980s, of the British model of
competency. Defined in terms of observable behaviours and performance, this model resulted in
the attempt to create a form of assessment based on outcomes so clearly specified that judgments
about whether they had been achieved would be straightforward (Wolf 1995, p.1). The claimed
advantages of behavioural notions of competence – their contribution to valid and reliable
assessment, requiring only a few days’ training in generic assessment skills – were however
critiqued in the education literature as chimerical, as there is no single model of competent
performance (Ashworth and Saxton, 1990; Wolf, 1995, p. 17). The specification of training
outcomes in the form of behavioural learning objectives was critiqued as denying broad,
conceptual and ‘incidental’ learning (Wolf, 1995, p. 85-86). Moreover, industrially, pay equity
practitioners were seeking to ensure that less observable service skills were codified in
competency standards (Hall, 1991; Burton, 1995).
In response, the original body set up to endorse Australian competency standards, the National
Training Board (NTB), advocated a ‘broader’ model of competence, embracing not only ‘task
skills’ but ‘task management skills, contingency management skills, and job/role environment
skills’(NTB, 1992, p. 29). The Board called for competency analysis to include ‘organising and
coordinating skills’ and ‘communication and interpersonal skills’., noting that the former were
not restricted to middle management jobs as ‘many jobs require constant rearranging and
reprioritising of tasks and team work coordination’ (NTB, 1991, p. 7). In 1994, the relevant
Ministers adopted the following proposal from the Australian National Training Authority:
Standards should encompass all aspects of competency, including underlying knowledge,
ability to transfer skills to new applications, literacy and numeracy competencies (ANTA,
1994, p.9).
This broad concept of competency has superficial similarities to that in the US management
development literature, where competence is seen as ‘an underlying characteristic of an
individual that is causally related to criterion referenced effective and/or superior performance in
a job or situation’ (Spencer and Spencer, 1993, p. 9). This more extended ‘attribute’ model of
competence presents significant problems of assessment, which are avoided in the behavioural
model at the price of comprehensiveness. Arguably, the expanded notion of competence also
lends itself to the forms of employer domination such as personality testing identified by Labour
Process theorists (eg Brown and Hesketh, 2004).
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Defining employability skills
Any notion of competence which includes motives (Spencer and Spencer, 1993) is problematic
on two counts. First, it leads to employer domination of ‘skill’, and second, it leads to
incoherence, by failing to differentiate between work-related knowledge, skills and aptitudes on
the one hand, and motivation/commitment on the other (Nordhaug 1999, p.19). Managers can
then define people unmotivated to perform in the desired way, not simply as uncooperative, but
as incompetent. The formulation, ‘I am competent to do x, but I lack the motivation to do it’ is
rendered contradictory, because competence is made to entail motivation. Resistance and
recalcitrance are thus redefined as incompetence. For similar reasons, several commentators have
identified as problematic the tendency for ‘skill’ definitions to embrace ‘a spectrum of
knowledge, capabilities, traits, and attributes – including discipline, and conformity to norms of
physical appearance’ (Keep and Mayhew, 1999, p. 10). Crouch et al (1999, p. 222) note
employers’ increasing desire for ‘social skills’ that may include anything from ‘the ability to
coordinate and secure cooperation, through ability to communicate effectively, to simple
willingness to obey orders’. Lafer (2004, pp. 117-8) documents how discipline, cooperation, and
compliance (and even freedom from substance abuse problems!) have been defined as ‘skills’.
Thus, ‘skill’ threatens to mean nothing more than ‘what employers want’.
These tendencies surfaced in Australia between 1998 and 2003, when employer organisations
redefined the generic skills of the Carmichael Report, as ‘employability’ skills (Sheldon and
Thornthwaite, 2005). These were described as ‘skills required not only to gain employment, but
also to progress within an enterprise so as to achieve one’s potential and contribute successfully
to enterprise strategic directions’ (ACCI, 2002, p. 3). Many of the generic skills listed would be
familiar to an international audience: communication, team work, problem solving, initiative and
enterprise, self management, learning and technology (ACCI/BCA, 2002). But the BCA and
ACCI added a number of desirable ‘personal attributes’: loyalty, commitment, honesty and
integrity, enthusiasm, reliability, personal presentation, commonsense, positive self esteem,
sense of humour, balanced attitude to work and home life, ability to deal with pressure,
motivation, adaptability (ACCI, 2002, p.5; ACCI/BCA 2002, pp.6-7). Fortunately, in the version
finally accepted by the Government, personal attributes were not included as part of the
employability skills framework.
In 2003-04 a major ANTA Review of Australian training packages found that there was a need
for a rethink of the assumptions underlying competency based training. The review gravitated
towards an expansive ‘collective’, or ‘integrative’ notion of competence, criticising what it saw
as an Anglo view of competence as being held by individuals. It argued that the Anglo model
fails to recognise the ‘context-dependent’ nature of competence: the conditions of a competent
performance may not reside entirely within the individual. An alternative approach would see
competence as ‘... the interaction of individual, group, managerial, and technological systems
which when brought together affect organisational competence. It is never individual but
collective’ (ANTA, 2003, p. 20). The Review went on to argue that ‘…collective competence
depends on each person having a shared understanding’, citing Boreham et al (2002) as
representative of this essentially ‘European’ perspective:
Work process knowledge is defined as an understanding of the labour process and the
production process in the organisation as a whole. Knowledge of this kind is needed by
employees of flexible organisations to enable them to deal with new situations and work
across boundaries. Work process knowledge is also crucial wherever communication and
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information technologies are introduced to make better use of knowledge assets (Boreham
et al, cited in ANTA, 2003, p. 20).
Despite their collective, contextual and processual understanding of skills, the Review authors
ultimately accepted the employers’ conception of these broad human capacities:
Technical skills are insufficient; cognitive skills, together with an array of generic skills
and dispositions, are of equal importance. Attributes such as problem solving, continuous
learning, communication and teamwork, are joined by others such as curiosity, motivation
and risk taking (ANTA, 2003, p. 4)
This quotation brings back ‘dispositions’ and motivation, alongside ‘technical’ and ‘cognitive
‘skills. This is a long way from the Carmichael Report notion of generic skills as foundational to
further learning – problem solving, continuous learning, communication and teamwork. In fact,
these are neither attributes nor skills, but activities enabled by cognitive and non-cognitive skills.
Nor need they be ‘basic’: levels of capacity for reflective learning and problem-solving are
deepened through experience and practice over time. It is important to clarify the confusions,
both about the content and about the level of these skills, and we do this in section five..
Embedding (and ignoring) employability skills
In May 2005, the National Training Quality Council (NTQC), the fore-runner of the NQC,
endorsed the incorporation of employability skills into training packages. Industry Skills
Councils (ISCs) received funding to review all existing training packages and modify
competency standards to incorporate ‘employability skills’ as required (NQC, 2006, p. 4).. On
the one hand, they would be listed alongside the technical competencies in the training package,
and could be isolated. But on the other hand, they were to be embedded in individual units of
competency – they would be ‘contained in the units of competency as part of the other
performance requirements that make up the competency as a whole’ (NQC, 2008, p. 31).
The justification for embedding generic skills was that they are developed in association with
these other skills because they have a mediating and transforming role and are the vehicle for
their development’ (NQC, 2008, p. 31). Despite the logic of this argument, the effect of not
assessing generic skills separately is likely to be their undervaluation. To roll them into the
competency standards makes them specific to a work process, and no longer assessable in their
own right at their actual performance level. Yet, to take one example, the skills of
communication are likely to be exercised at different levels (and possibly in different ways) in
different qualifications at the same level – for example at Certificate III in Business Services,
Aged Care Work and Transport and Logistics. Arguably, what is needed is a method of assessing
the levels of what are called employability or generic skills independently of the technical or
functional skills with which they are intertwined in any particular work process.
Thus the push for employability skills to be ‘embedded’ in training packages has posed further
problems, in particular, a possible difference in skill level between the qualification itself, and
the ‘employability’ skills it requires. Jobs at similar qualification levels may require varying
levels of teamwork, communication and so on. Proposed solutions to this have not been
convincing. ‘Embedding’ prevents any possibility of recognising the ‘uncodified’ skills
separately from the work process in which they are embedded, and thus prevents these skills
from being certified in themselves, and rewarded (Hampson and Junor, 2009). If appropriatelyspecified ‘generic’ skills were available separately for use across training packages, this might
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achieve two purposes: contribute to the desired streamlining of training packages, and aid career
mobility by identifying common element and transferable skill requirements in jobs that are
apparently quite different. In fact, however, the opposite occurred, making it harder to recognise
workplace learning As the problem has not been overcome in the most recent attempt to
conceptualise levels in a proposed renovation of the Australian Qualification Framework, we
return to it in section five.
Assessment quality and the expertise of assessors
The 2008 OECD Review of Australian training commented on ‘the lack of standardised national
assessments [which] means that there is no standard to ensure that a particular set of skills has in
fact been acquired’ (Hoeckel et al, 2008, cited in Guthrie, 2009, p. 13). Only RTOs can issue
nationally recognised qualifications. But to do so they need to meet certain standards.
Marketisation created an increased need, via the AQTF, to ensure that these standards were met
in diverse RTOs but quality assurance mechanisms have been deeply flawed (Guthrie, 2009, p.
28).
Weaknesses in the training and qualifications of trainers and assessors have been well
documented. The qualifications for becoming a workplace assessor are set at Certificate IV level
– considerably below the graduate diploma or degree level qualifications required of school
teachers. The main assessor competencies have been set out in a succession of workplace
training and assessment training packages, but anecdotal evidence suggests that learning time in
assessor courses can be quite varied, and may have diminished.
In addition, workplace assessors are required to have ‘relevant vocational competencies at least
to the level being assessed’. Between 2001 and 2010, however, there was an escape clause in this
requirement. Assessors lacking the vocational competencies being assessed could work with
someone who had these competencies while they conducted assessments (AQTF 2001, p. 17).
This ‘let-out’ clause in practice led to people assessing outside their areas of competence. If
valid and reliable assessment was to be achieved, much turned on the meaning of the phrase
‘work with’. It is hard to understand how as assessor with a background in clerical skills could
assess the underpinning knowledge of an automotive skills candidate, even when working with
an automotive practitioner. The escape clause remained through several revisions of the AQTF
(AQTF, 2005; 2007, p. 4) although it has been eliminated from the most recent version (see
AQTF 2010, p. 6; NQC 2009, p. 4). This recent change can be seen as an admission of a
significant previous quality gap.
Anecdotal evidence on the training, assessing and work content expertise of assessors was
gathered during a small-scale project supervised by the authors in 2008-2009 (Cheng et al.,
2010). This interview-based project analysed assessors’ experiences of making a judgment of
competence. One-off assessment events were common, and there was not a particularly strong
consensus that the divide between ‘competent’ and ‘not yet competent’ was clear-cut. Nor were
assessors particularly consistent in the evidence and criteria they applied. Some required an
assessee to be able to describe and articulate what they were doing – even though ironically,
assessors were not themselves always able to articulate their own practice. Approaches to
moderation of assessments by interaction with peers varied greatly.
11 | P a g e
Pressures for grading within competency based assessment
The project also collected evidence of pressure for graded assessment, challenging the binary
‘competent/not yet competent’ approach of CBT. Can a work job be performed competently, but
at different levels of competent performance? The usual objection to the binary approach came is
that it discourages the pursuit of excellence (Pennington 1992). Despite difficulties in explaining
the distinction between ‘highly competent’ and ‘competent’, graded assessments were fairly
common among the interview sample. Some RTOs even kept two sets of records, one displaying
the required binary ‘competent/not yet competent’ assessment, one with grades. Such practices
may have reflected little more than attempts by RTOs, particularly within the private training
market, to gain competitive advantage through credential inflation. It is to be presumed that
graduates issued with grades enjoyed some advantage in the labour market, and this practice thus
created inequity for those not issued with grades. Overall, the research supported the view that
there is a wide variety of assessment practices across the system, and considerable problems of
reliability and validity.
It is likely, however, that a desire to grade performance also reflects a real dilemma – a desire to
document varying levels of skill in workplace practice. Varying levels of performance within a
job are likely to reflect experience in the job – in other words, levels may reflect stages of nonformal learning, on the journey from novice to expert. In this context, graded assessment may
have the perverse effect of rendering the credentials of novices less competitive in the
recruitment market, reinforcing the recent employer tendency to give preference to experienced
workers and to shirk the obligation to provide induction and workplace training. Arguably then,
the practice of graded assessment within CBA is problematic, Graded assessment may reinforce
the labour market disadvantage of first-time labour market entrants. The dilemma of how to
recognise performance levels within a qualification is part and parcel of the dilemma of how best
to recognise the generic skills that make for effective work performance.
An Alternative Conceptualisation of Generic Skills and their Levels
Building on Boreham et al. (2002) we would redefine employability skills as capacities to
engage in or contribute to work processes. An economical yet comprehensive research-derived
list of such process skill sets, classified into elements, is set out in Table 1 (New Zealand
Department of Labour 2009). This list was seen by co-authors Junor, Hampson et al. as the
irreducible minimum of hitherto under-specified skills enabling effective work performance,
identified by coding accounts of work activity recorded in 57 lengthy job analysis interview
transcripts and 94 position descriptions.
The skills are basic in the sense that they are indispensible to work performance, but they are not
‘elementary’. They are ‘generic’ in that they are transferable from one situation to another, but
they are not undifferentiated at the point where they are applied in specific contexts. For example
the activities enabled by the ‘Interacting and relating’ skill set can be defined quite precisely,
depending on context. Nevertheless there is a wide number of activities in which the same skills
can be used. This is important for recognition: skills learned in one work, community or
domestic setting can be applied to other work situations. Thus the skill element ‘Communicating
verbally and non-verbally’ can be applied, at varying levels of complexity, to produce the
following list of concrete work activities:

Interpret the needs and intentions of people who have restricted verbal language;
12 | P a g e









Use silent friendly listening, allowing people to talk through their concerns;
Use reassuring and respectful touch (when appropriate), to convey or gain information;
Pace communication to the varying attention spans of different listeners;
Pitch language to people with varying levels of under-standing.
Overcome miscommunication problems by ‘translating’ eg between children and experts.
Solve technical problems for non-experts by using symbols or familiar comparisons, to
identify the problem and communicate solutions.
Coin catch-phrases that will serve as a shared guide to action.
Crystallise the views of a diverse audience, with apt or memorable language or images.
Use understanding of community issues to ensure communications gain acceptance by a
range of audiences (New Zealand Department of Labour 2009).
Table 1 Three Sets of Work Process Skills
A. Shaping awareness:
Capacity to develop, focus and shape own and others’ awareness, by
A1 Sensing contexts or situations
A2 Monitoring and guiding reactions
A3 Judging impacts
B. Interacting and relating:
Capacity to negotiate inter-personal, organisational and inter-cultural relationships by
B1 Negotiating boundaries
B2 Communicating verbally and non-verbally
B3 Connecting across cultures
C. Coordinating:
Capacity to organise own work, link it into the overall workflow and deal with obstacles and disruptions, by
C1 Sequencing and combining activities
C2 Interweaving own activities with others’
C3 Maintaining and restoring work-flow
Source: NZ Department of Labour, 2009
This list is a composite compilation of activities described by the jobholders interviewed, all
enabled by the same underpinning skill. Many further examples could be identified in other
contexts. Few of these activities require skills that can in any sense be seen as basic or
elementary. They may involve many cognitive, ethical, or motor behaviours, which may be
unseen by the observer, or even tacit (unnoticed by the performer). Proficiency in them is built
up through experience – that is through informal learning in the workplace and in other work
settings, domestic or community-based. Routine performance of work activities may draw on
skills that have become so highly practised as to have become automatic, until a challenging
situation occurs, requiring a switch to conscious, reflective performance.
Whilst a work process skill may be observable only when applied in a concrete situation, this
situation may be one of many contexts in which it is applied. This is the sense in which work
process skills are generic. The contextual application has to be learned, so it is misleading to see
generic skills as widely available ‘off the street’. However complex and specialised are the
13 | P a g e
applications, of generic skills, it may be reinventing the wheel for each Training Package to write
its own version of them. This is why regret was expressed above at the decision to embed
employability skills in functional competency units, rather than codifying them separately. Had
elements and units been available for inclusion in a range of functional training packages, it
would have been easier to map similar skill demands in different jobs, allowing a new approach
to job families and career paths. Such an approach may also have helped address the criticism
that training packages are over-burdened.
Table 2 identifies five levels of proficiency at which these work process skills were found to be
deployed in the workplace (NZ Department of Labour, 2009; Hampson and Junor, 2010). This
concept of proficiency level or workplace learning level is finer-grained than the notion of
qualification level or occupation level. Within a given occupation, job or qualification, there may
be a range of levels of expertise, differentiating the expert from the novice (Dreyfus and Dreyfus,
1986). The desire of assessors to grade candidates’ performance is likely to be a reflection of
differences in learned proficiency, based on work and life experience.. Table 2 sets out a
framework for recognising growing levels of expertise within a job, based on research conducted
by the authors and their colleagues.
Table 2 Learning Levels within a Job - Definitions and Basis
Descriptor
Basis
Familiarisation
Automatic
fluency
Proficient
problemsolving
Creative
solution
sharing
Expert systemshaping
Participating
as a novice, by
building
expertise
through
observation,
practice and
reflection
Participating
as a practiced
performer,
independently
applying
operational
knowledge to
the point
where activity
is automatic
Participating as
an experienced
problem-solver,
carrying out
operations
already learned,
whilst applying
experience to
creating new
solutions
Participating
as a sharer of
practical
knowledge, in
the exchange
of stories or
notes about
trial-and-error
solutions
Participating as
a knowledge
creator or
system
innovator,
helping to
spread or change
a system of
work or
knowledge
Source: NZ Department of Labour, 2009.
Table 2 suggests that recent efforts to identify levels of employability skills at the point of job
entry reflect the problem that in the past two decades, employers, by seeking to recruit people
with ready-made problem solving or teamwork capabilities, have been able to use screening
processes to ‘buy’ rather than ‘grow’ advanced level skills. This may become harder to do.
Looming skills shortages are likely to give a competitive advantage to employers who are willing
to provide post-entry induction training to help recruits move through a period of familiarisation
and automatisation through practice, to Learning Level 3, where they are solving new problems
in the course of routine work. Pressures for the identification of ‘levels’ of employability skills
(ACER, 2008) would seem to be problematic, to the extent that school leavers are expected
already to have the skills that they will in fact need to learn on the job.
Figure 2 illustrates the distinction between levels of expertise, derived from workplace
experience, and qualification or occupational levels. Stages though which work process skills are
deepened WITHIN an occupation or qualification level, are represented along the horizontal
14 | P a g e
axis, while the qualification level within which the occupation sits is represented by the vertical
axis. The following section presents evidence from new research, suggesting a way through the
conceptual morass. While in fact the concept of experience levels can be applied to functional,
as well as generic skills, here we apply it to the latter. This analysis could provide the basis for a
more adequate approach to the assessment, both of employability/generic skills, and to the
assessment of non-formal and informal knowledge, discussed in section five. It may help resolve
the difficulty that current mechanisms for recognising prior learning face, in going to
competency standards as a basis for assessment.
Figure 2 Qualification Levels and Levels of Experience/Informal Learning
With these considerations in mind, we finish by examining the recent overlapping attempts by
the new AQFC and the NQC (the latter slated for absorption into the new pan-tertiary regulator)
to achieve a genuinely national and reliable qualifications framework, and to provide an
equitable system for the recognition of formal learning and workplace expertise.
New Qualification ‘Architecture’: Can it deliver a Quality National System of Equitable
Workforce Development?
We turn now to the centrepiece of the Labor Government’s skilled workforce development
project - the strengthening of a genuinely national Australian Qualifications Framework. The
purpose is to harmonise Australian qualifications internationally and across states and sectors,
allowing career mobility to be based on learning outcomes. For pathways to operate equitably,
there need to be consistent ways of recognising both the behavioural and less observable
cognitive aspects of learning outcomes, whether based on formal, non-formal or informal
education, training and work or life experience. The new Australian Qualifications Framework
Council (AQFC), charged with this architectural design challenge, produced two consultation
papers (2009a; 2009b). We analyse the strengths of their proposed model, but also some
incoherences, particularly relating to the thorny issue of levels.
15 | P a g e
The need for global alignment of qualifications led to a comparative study of international
practice. This international comparison suggested that the AQF is behind international
developments. While its qualification descriptors are ‘learning outcomes-based’, they are not
explicit and consistent, and they are described differently in each of the education sectors. They
are not hierarchical, or ordered in levels of increasing complexity or volume of learning. That is,
the AQF as it currently stands, is not a genuine levels based system, although the language of
levels (Certificate 1-IV, etc) gives that impression. There is no clear description of the
relationships between the qualification types, nor of how they might be articulated. This is
because the AQF, as it currently stands, does not include a common measure of value, inhibiting
learning transfer and labour mobility. Nor does the AQF indicate how all forms of learning –
formal, non-formal and informal – can be recognised (AQFC, 2009a).
The AQFC consultation papers (2009a; 2009b) therefore canvassed ways of turning a loose
credential hierarchy, analogous to a nominal scale, into an articulated framework of equivalent
and substitutable values, analogous to a ratio scale. For this, it suggested three sets of criteria.
The first was a common taxonomy for defining breadth and depth of learning outcomes (along
the ‘dimensions’ of knowledge, skills and competences). The second was a common measure of
value (a ‘currency’ for measuring ‘volume’ of learning). The third was a set of explicit reference
points (‘levels’) for comparing volume along these dimensions. Chosen dimensions, defined in
terms of learning outcomes, were: knowledge, skills and their application: what a person knows,
understands, and is able to do as a result of achieving each qualification (AQFC, 2009b).
These proposals are interesting in the light of the preceding discussion of competence, which has
been the basis of the VET sector for over 20 years. Fundamentally, competence has been defined
in terms of ‘what a person is able to do to the standards expected in employment’, independent of
the time taken to achieve this capacity. In fact, one of the original rationales for the introduction
of CBT was that it would liberate trainees from the tyranny of ‘serving time’, and allow
progression up skills-based career ladders independent of formal learning, with provision for
‘Recognition of Prior Learning’ (RPL). Few recognised the difficulties this would give rise to in
terms of articulation among qualifications, much less international transfer. While problems of
articulation could, to some extent, be dealt with on an ad-hoc, case by case basis within national
borders, the quest for international equivalence exposed this limit of the system.
Of particular interest then is the proposed reintroduction (AQFC, 2009b, pp. 7, 13) of a measure
of the volume of learning in each qualification type. This is advocated as a way of establishing
whether learners have met the requirements for course entry or for the award of a qualification.
It is seen as allowing for mobility across programs and for articulation among courses at
different levels. It also allows for an assessment of the relativities amongst courses. The proposal
draws on local and international HE practices, and suggests that CBT never really eliminated the
concept of ‘student learning time’ in the VET sector. It uses the internationally familiar concept
of credit points, linked to an abstract concept of average ‘student learning time’, a common rule
of thumb being ten hours per credit point. This may be a welcome antidote to the thinning of
curriculum in an assessment-driven competency-based approach. It does however raise questions
about the process that will be used for establishing the equivalence of learning based on
experience, although it does lend itself to recognising the deepening and broadening of
workplace ‘skills of experience’.
The May 2009 consultation paper (AQFC, 2009a) proposed a ‘KSC’ (Knowledge, skills,
competences’) model, which
16 | P a g e
… is applicable across all qualification levels and fields. It provides for the inclusion and
assessment of the knowledge and skills achieved as well as for the complexity and
breadth of the context in which they have been learned and assessed, and thus, by
inference, can be applied. This is considered the minimum information required to fully
explain the outcomes of a qualification and is becoming standard practice in all National
Qualification Frameworks (CEDEFOP, 2006a, in AQFC, 2009a, p. 11).
Learning outcomes could be captured as: knowledge, or what a student knows/understands in
terms of breadth, depth and complexity; skills, or what a student can do; how knowledge and
understanding is applied and competences. We welcome the explicit reintroduction of knowledge
and skill into VET qualifications.
The concept of competences, as used in the discussion paper, remains problematic. The AQFC
suggested that competence is 'often referred to as the context in which the knowledge and skills
can be applied'. But this is confusing: competence is defined as a learned outcome – and people
carry learned outcomes into a context. Moreover, this dimension includes specific competences
and can also include generic competencies. Alternatively, these could be classified separately as
a fourth dimension (p. 11). The May consultation paper accordingly canvassed two options. In
the first, ‘Competences’ would include both context AND generic skills (learning to learn,
communication, technology etc) aka ‘employability skills’. In the second, competence includes
context, with generic skills listed separately. We welcome the return to the terminology of
generic, rather than employability, skills but find the conceptualisation of ‘context’ somewhat
confusing. ‘Context’ is defined to include ‘autonomy’, or ‘the amount of supervision, guidance
and the required clarity of parameters required for performance’, and ‘accountability’, or ‘the
degree of responsibility able to be managed for their and others’ processes and output’ (AQFC,
2009a, p. 12). Perhaps the intention is to include collective learning (which we would applaud),
or to signal that learning is situated in contexts and transferred to other contexts (with which we
would also agree). Indeed both the linguistically loose term ‘context’ and the term ‘competences’
in the May consultation paper was replaced in the September consultation paper (AQFC, 2009b,
pp. 13-16) with the clearer term ‘application of knowledge and skills’. Nevertheless the
confusion remains, in the definition: ‘Application of knowledge and skills is the context in which
a graduate applies knowledge and skills’ (AQFC, 2009b, p. 5).
Moreover, this third learning outcome, ‘application’ is classified into levels on the basis of
degrees of autonomy, responsibility and accountability, which at higher levels only are specified
as including judgment and expert authority (AQFC, 2009b, pp. 5; 13-19). There are two
problems with the use of these criteria to determine skill levels. Firstly, it accepts an
individualisation of the employment relationship, and ties the definition of skill level to an
employer-defined organisation of work. Secondly, and of fundamental importance, it is likely to
result in a tendency to restrict recognition of independence and expertise to those possessing
high-level qualifications, or located in highly-qualified occupations. These objections are
considered in turn.
In the employment relation, the context of an individual’s work is shaped by capitalist social
relations. In labour process theory, the problem of the employment relation is to ensure the
conversion of labour power into actual labour. The dominant feature of the ‘context’ at work is
employer control over the labour process, and this either limits or affirms the extent to which
individual employees can exercise their skills, and the ways in which they do so. The
17 | P a g e
organisation of the labour process is not the prerogative of an individual worker. Certainly, there
is ambiguity in the concept of ‘autonomy’, which can include both capacity (a learned outcome),
and the permission to exercise that capacity (an aspect of work organisation). These two distinct
meanings seem to be conflated in the AQFC definition. Similarly, ‘accountability’, seen as a
property of an individual, is part of the tendency in the employability skills discourse and, more
broadly, the Anglo notion of skill, to individualise responsibility for capitalist work organisation
qua skill. It is also similar to how the managerial concepts of competence (eg Spencer and
Spencer, 1993), collapse motivation within ‘competence’.
The second problem is that criteria such as autonomy, judgment and expert authority are a priori
ruled out of existence in lower-level qualifications, and by transference, in the occupations
aligned to these qualifications. But this is to conflate a whole-job or whole-qualification
conceptualisation of ‘level’ with the concept of work process skill level – it mixes the vertical
and horizontal axes of Figure 2 above. There is really no basis for the assumption that, within
any job or occupation, levels of formal knowledge, functional skill, and work process
knowledge/generic skill are required at the same level. There is now considerable researchbased evidence (Junor, Hampson and Ogle, 2009; NZ Department of Labour, 2009; Hampson
and Junor, 2010); that in low-status occupations such as community service and aged care work,
staff with extensive life and work experience may be engaged in complex problem-solving and
collective solution sharing. They may be required to exercise sophisticated judgment, and may
be seen by peers as authoritative resources, even contribute to changes in workplace systems. Yet
the new taxonomic framework is making it hard to recognise that such higher level learning
outcomes may be required in jobs classified at lower qualification levels on the basis of formal
knowledge requirements.
The May AQFC consultation paper (2009a) revived the possibility of a separate codification of
work process skills, lost in 2005 when employability skills were ‘embedded’ in competency
units. The AQFC put forward two concepts of ‘learned outcomes’ for consideration: one
proposed including ‘generic skills’ within ‘competence’, the other dividing
employability/generic skills from the descriptions of other learned outcomes. This would have
created problems of assessment and record keeping (Guthrie, 2009); but would have made it
possible for generic skills to be registered and assessed separately from technical skills and
qualifications. The version adopted by the AQFC (2009b) advocating the embedding of generic
skills within competence – the so called ‘option B’ – is much the same as the NQC (2005)
recommendation that employability skills be embedded within competency standards within
training packages, and vulnerable to the same concerns. It will make it very hard to register
‘informal’ learning for credit apart from the qualification it is part of. This reinforces the failure,
just discussed, to allow that generic or work process skills may exist at different levels to the
functional or technical skills that they facilitate. In this respect, the AQFC proposals fall short of
their objective of giving credit for non-formal learning (defined as ‘unstructured, intentional
learning’) and for informal learning (defined as ‘unstructured, unintentional learning’), both of
which ‘might be validated for credit’ (AQFC, 2009a, p. 22).
It is to be hoped that another workplace learning recognition project is carried forward (NQC,
2009). In late 2008, the NQF Training Packages Standing Committee commissioned a scoping
project to advise on a policy for the recognition of skills acquired through active workplace or
community participation, individual and group activities, non-course workplace learning
activities such as discussion groups, or non-recognised structured programs such as short
18 | P a g e
courses. The purpose of such recognition was seen as extending beyond qualifications, by
addressing employers’ need to meet quality assurance criteria and employees’ quest for job
reclassification. Whilst Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) was found to be the main
Australian approach, the paper listed a range of others: credit-rating of workplace learning
(Scotland), use of assessment centres (Mexico), international recognition exchange (Europass)
and E-portfolios (UK). It was recommended that a national policy be established to provide for
multiple recognition approaches – RPL; industry/provider/enterprise assessment systems; credit
rating of workplace learning, and structure recording systems (NQC, 2009 p. 23). Whilst in their
current format the proposals are over-reliant on assessment against training package standards,
other assessment tools are now available, including job evaluation approaches and tools for
identifying under-specified skills (NZ Department of Labour, 2009). It will be very
disappointing if these insights and approaches are lost in the latest wave of qualification
restructuring.
Conclusion
The current wave of training reform in Australia has set out to redress the problems of equity that
have always plagued the country’s fragmented VET system. It has taken up and extended the
national skill formation goals of the first wave of training reform, from 1987 to 1992. Workforce
planning has been restored to some credibility, notiwthstanding the advocates of ‘market design’.
There have been moves to address the regulatory and governance issues that between 1992 and
2007 compromised quality and equity in a marketised and decentralised VET system. These
moves have been encapsulated within a foreshadowed restructuring of the tertiary education
system. The pressing need for tightened quality assurance has been addressed by proposals for a
national regulator across the VET and HE sectors.
Proposals for enhancing international and national labour and career path mobility have taken the
form of an attempt to create a nationally and internationally harmonised qualifications
framework. A quiet restoration of the importance of knowledge and learning time may weaken
the competency based system of VET delivery that has given primacy to employers’ demand for
just in time staffing. The language of generic skills seems to be quietly replacing that of
employability skills, particularly formulations of the latter that might lend themselves to
screening employees for attitudinal compliance. There is some evidence that unfinished equity
agendas are being picked up, with welcome attention to the recognition of skills acquired nonformally and informally.
There has, however, been a reluctance to move too far from the neoliberal market-contractualist
model of the past two decades. Arguably even in 1987-1992, the era when peak union bodies
proposed national skill formation agendas/industrial relations agendas, it was the voice of
employer organisations to which government was listening. From then till 2007, implementation
of competency based training and assessment ran into contradictions that were partly the result of
employers’ preference for labour market flexibility and reluctance to invest in training, and
partly the result of quality issues in the operation and regulation of training markets and
contestably-funded state training authorities. The other source of difficulty was a certain
incoherence in the conceptualisation of competency, generic skills and skill levels. We have
proposed an alternative approach to identifying and classifying skill levels in forms of learning
based on life and work experience, and suggested how these could be incorporated into new
approaches to recognition within the proposed new national system.
19 | P a g e
The problem of defining the exact nature of the human capacities that are the object of skills
development, and building those definitions into recognition structures, is one that confronts the
participants in any training system. The relative power of the social partners is shifting as a result
of emerging skill shortage. While union representation has been restored to some of the policy
bodies shaping current agendas, the rebuilding of avenues for expressing employee voice is
lagging some way behind the building of a new national tertiary education system and its
recognition architecture.
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