An Essential Skills Action Plan

I am reading a paper from ANTA/ DEST called An Essentail Skills Plan, that exams future directions for basic literacy. It has a refreshing approach, talking about successful outcomes not only in terms of "employability" or "work ready" but functioning effectively socially in family and community contexts. The approach is less of a bandaid:

Short-term funding and strategies that set-up a competitive environment between providers of essential skill services are counter-productive to the development of sustainable partnerships and quality programs.6 Funding mechanisms need to be created that allow for flexible delivery of programs and encourage partnerships between organisations, with more flexible ways of utilising existing pools of funding being explored. Proposed new three-year funding cycles may help to facilitate greater collaboration for programs that seek to embed essential skills via a ‘builtin, not bolted on’ approach. Funding and support for successful and innovative projects and for new initiatives are particularly important.

I would love to hear what others think.

In the words of Barbara Bee...

A few months ago I was chatting to Barbara Bee, she was recalling the events of days gone by at Granville. I asked Barbara is she would write it down as not all of us knew this history. I am pleased to say Barbara has recorded her story for us. An extract follows:

Despite all this TAFE remains my educational home and it has and still does give me the greatest satisfaction in teaching and encouraging community initiatives.

I think too that Outreach is under-appreciated and under-valued because its philosophy is at odds with user-pays. It resists the commodification of a basic human right to adult education and argues it’s never too late to learn.

So, you may be asking at this point, where’s all this preamble leading to and what has it to do with the present reorganization of TAFE women’s programs in Outreach?

Thank you Barbara

What is a qualification in our brave new world?

The Australian Qualifications Framework defines qualifications.

Qualification is defined as follows: formal certification, issued by a relevant approved body, in recognition that a person has achieved learning outcomes or competencies relevant to identified individual, professional,industry or community needs.

A debate I hear often is about course accreditation, the handbook goes some way in clarifying such debates with definitions such as:

Accredited course means a structured sequence of VET that has been accredited by a state or territory course accrediting body and leads to an AQF qualification or statement of attainment.

Who needs it - Certificate IV WTA and Certificate IV TAA?

There is much debate about who needs the Certificate IV, old or new to teach or assess learners. Should those with the old Certificate IV be upgrading their qualification and other such questions emerge regularly in such debates. There are also questions about the value of the qualification in teaching practices. This link to the AQTF 2005 RTO standards is source of the requirements.

7.3 a The RTO must ensure assessments are conducted by a person who has: i the following competencies from the Training and Assessment Training Package or is able to demonstrate equivalent competencies:

1. TAAASS401A Plan and organise assessment
2. TAAASS402A Assess competence
3. TAAASS404A Participate in assessment validation