Past, present, and future of vocational education and training regulations in Australia

This is a good opportunity to discuss some of the most significant changes that have taken place within the vocational education and training sector in Australia over the past few years. This section can be broken down into three primary subparts. The Australian National Training Authority (ANTA), the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) and future organisations. 

Australian National Training Authority (ANTA)

The Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) was initially founded as a legislative authority of the Australian Government in 1992. However, in 2005, the Australian Government decided to abolish ANTA altogether. This council was founded so that it could serve as a focal point for vocational education and training (VET) on a national scale. It was ensured that the VET courses delivered quality training and that they satisfied the demands of the industry, the community, and the individual participants by doing this, which ensured that they were successful. Because of ANTA, the training sector in Australia has been redesigned to address the problem of skills shortages and to ensure that the skills attained via the completion of VET credentials are in accordance with those that are required by businesses.

As the first fully realised national training system within the field of vocational and technical education, it made a significant contribution to the development of nationally consistent training standards within the field. This contribution was made possible by its status as the first national training system overall.

In the early days of the training system in Australia, there was no consistency between the states like there is today because of ANTA. Each state developed its own set of requirements, and these requirements were not always accepted in the other states' systems.

ANTA was first established in 1992, and shortly after that, the association began implementing new initiatives, standards, and accrediting programs. These were intended to serve as the basis for the construction of the National Training Framework (now known as the National Skills Framework). In order for graduates of TAFE programmes to be declared "work-ready," it was necessary to prove that these individuals have the relevant skills for employment and that they were capable of transferring their credentials to other jurisdictions. As a direct consequence of this, one of the objectives of the VET industry was to enhance the sector's reputation. As a result of the initiative, skill shortages were addressed, which contributed to an increase in employment levels across the country.

The Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) has created some of the best systems and practices in the education and training industry through the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF), VET Course Accreditation requirements, national register of training packages, monitored and managed the national funding arrangements for states and territories. 

Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) 

ASQA began as a regulatory body with very good intentions to ensure quality education and training in order to ensure that students, employers, governments, and the community can have confidence in the integrity of qualifications that are issued by training providers. These good intentions led to the establishment of the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA). In addition to this, it began the process of removing dishonest providers from the market. But what exactly did it accomplish? Due to the legislative powers that it possessed, the organisation that could not be challenged made the decision to concentrate on paperwork rather than on quality training organisations. The closure of hundreds of training providers was caused by quite straightforward administrative issues. There have been instances of unprofessionalism within the regulatory body.  Training organisations were strongly advised against the use of RTO consultants and audit reports were riddled with inaccuracies and contained information that was misleading. 

At the Australian Skills Quality Authority, inaccuracies were so widespread that there have been numerous instances in which even the names of the organisations that were being audited were misspelt on the audit reports. Incorrect names have even been given to members of the RTO staff (ASQA). The regulatory body is now going through a period of change, however, the question is whether or not these changes will be beneficial to the VET and RTO market. Will these reforms make it easier for employers and other stakeholders in the industry to recruit qualified workers? These questions can only be answered by the passage of time. 

The significant increase in consultancy and external supplier engagement caused ASQA to overspend on suppliers by 38% compared to the budget for the past financial year, resulting in a loss of $7.23 million reported last year - almost double the loss that ASQA had budgeted for. ASQA appears to know how to spend taxpayer funds despite a significant reduction in audit activity and service standard performance in the 2019/20 period when the regulator had a 31% underspend on its supplier budget and posted a loss of only $239,000. During this time, ASQA has also reduced the amount of performance monitoring that it conducts for the sector to a whopping 68% from its previous levels. There have been 1128 audits conducted by the compliance monitoring team in 2019-20. A total of 356 performance assessments were conducted by them in 2021-22. It is also worth noting that ASQA had a 16% increase in its total funding, which went from $54.8 million to $63.6 million over the same period. 

APS's latest Employee Census reports only 11% of ASQA employees agree their organisation manages change well. It is stated that 53% of employees suggested they are pursuing a position in another agency, 28% of ASQA employees intend to leave within a year and 19% wish to leave immediately. 88% of the employees have reported discrimination occurs within the current agency and only 31% would recommend the organisation as a good place to work and only 36% stated they feel a strong personal attachment to the organisation. 

We have seen two extreme sides of the same regulatory body: one side that was completely ruled by a dictatorial regime, which is what everyone refers to as the dark period of ASQA between 2016 and 2019, and another organisation that is just so laidback now that insane amounts of ethically questionable things are happening in the sector, such as qualifications with high risk being delivered online without any due diligence and unqualified trainers teaching and using substandard training materials to courses being delivered insanely fast track. 

As a regulatory body, the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) has done a lot to provide auditor-centred audit practices. This has allowed the same auditor to come to different conclusions about the same resource over a period of weeks or months. This has led to a system that is heavily regulated and governed based on the personal preferences and choices of the auditor rather than those based on the system as a whole.

Future processes and requirements 

It appears that the Australian Government is in the process of finalising the new standards, but the proposed standards seem to be a missed opportunity in terms of required innovation and foresight. It seems that the standards are the recycling of standards of registered training organisations from 2015 rather than a quality framework that can meet the requirements of the industry and the Australian economy. Nevertheless, we are pleased that public feedback is taken into account during the development of these standards and that the final versions of these standards, hopefully, will be based on the needs of employers and industries, the best practices in auditing and risk management, as well as the quality of training, assessment, and governance.