Commonwealth initiative will ensure foundation skills access through community education providers

A new Commonwealth Government initiative will ensure increased numbers of Australian adults can develop literacy and numeracy skills with substantial funding going to the adult and community education (ACE) sector to deliver the training.

The Australian Government plans to invest up to $142 million over the Agreement “to improve foundation skills training quality and access. This includes up to $77 million for foundation skills training through the Adult and Community Education sector.”

Make no mistake: This is the largest single investment by the Commonwealth in Australia’s ACE sector since 2009, when the Commonwealth set up a $100 million infrastructure “Investing in Community Education and Training program”, part of a $500 million VET Capital Fund.

The new “Ensuring Access to Foundation Skills initiative” is part of the five-year National Skills Agreement between the Commonwealth and states/territories, which commences on 1 January 2024.

The DEWR fact sheet states that “Funding for the ACE sector recognises its key role in supporting the most disadvantaged Australians, who may find it difficult to engage with mainstream education and prefer to learn in a more informal local community environment. The initiative will also develop a 10-year national foundation skills strategy to strengthen the quality and sustainability of the sector.”

Congratulations to Skills Minister Brendan O’Connor for this initiative. Wonderful news for Community Colleges Australia, which advocated so hard and so long for recognition of the valuable work ACE providers do in engaging the most disadvantaged learners. And good news for Reading Writing Hotline, which has an essential role to play in connecting learners and ACE providers.

I am not overstating the importance of this initiative: it is “history in the making”.

Putting ‘community’ back into Australian vocational education and training

My blog post entitled ““Re-inserting ‘community’ into Australian Vocational Education and Training” has just been published by Open Forum (11 May 2016).

In this article, I discuss how in the lead up to the federal election on July 2, Australian vocational education (VET) has now entered the political debate. I argue that the most cost-effective VET policy initiative is to reinvigorate the community education providers and build on their capacity.

I discuss the VET FEE-HELP loan scandals, the collapse of private for-profit vocational education colleges and how VET has entered the political debate – given a high priority by Bill Shorten (Leader of the Opposition) in his “Budget Reply” speech last week, and the recently announced Commonwealth Discussion Paper on the re-design of VET FEE-HELP.  I conclude by describing the vitality and importance of community education – particularly in regional and rural Australia, ending with a message to the politicians of all political persuasions: reinvigorating the community education providers and building on their capacity, can and will be one of the most cost-effective VET policy initiatives you can implement.