Research

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Research

Reality check: Matching training to the needs of regional Australia

Does training in regional Australia match local skills needs? This is the question posed by Sue Gelade and Trish Fox in their report, Reality check: Matching training to the needs of regional Australia. It is an important question, given that clusters of high- and low-growth regions across the country are becoming more apparent and more entrenched. In particular, building the skills base of those areas doing less well economically will be crucial to their further growth.

We know that regional training providers are committed to meeting the training needs of local industries. Therefore, Gelade and Fox decided to concentrate on gathering the views of small and medium employers to see if they were succeeding, using Cairns (Queensland) and the Limestone Coast (South Australia) as case studies. Their research echoes the refrain for greater flexibility in training delivery and for creative collaboration among the players in regional economies.

Key messages

Desk-based research indicates that training courses offered by technical and further education (TAFE) institutes and private registered training organisations match the needs of identified current and emerging industries relatively well.
For many regional industries, the most common and pressing issue is not the availability of training courses, but competition for employees.
TAFE institutes structure their offerings on industry needs and state government priorities. Often these reflect metropolitan influences as much as regional needs.
Time lags between identifying relevant courses and their provision mean that regional industry tends to manage its skills development needs without relying on TAFE provision. Private registered training organisations, which develop courses more rapidly, are often industry's first choice.
Delivering the training required by regional enterprises is a difficult business. As a result, enterprises tend to rely on their own workplace training systems and are happy to use a mix of options from TAFE institutes, private registered training organisations and in-house trainers. They will sometimes also cooperate across industry to enable training in common skills sets to be delivered in a region.

This report points to the importance of partnerships among vocational education and training (VET) providers and across sectors. These themes are also explored in a suite of work commissioned by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) on VET in the regions, a synthesis of which can be found in Tabatha Griffin and Penelope Curtin's Regional partnerships: At a glance http://www.ncver.edu.au/publications/1938.html.

Tom Karmel
Managing Director, NCVER