An overview

Competency-based training

Australia has been developing and implementing a competency-based training system for the past decade or more. Competency-based training is probably the most critical feature which distinguishes the Australian vocational education and training from many other vocational education and training systems.

The aim of competency-based training is to ensure that vocational education and training programmes better meet the needs of industry and Australia’s enterprises.

The industry training organisation network in Australia, consisting of Industry Training Advisory Bodies (ITABs), has been heavily involved in:

• identifying the competencies required by industry from formal training at different levels
• developing industry competency standards for each training programme with a system of national training packages for each industry
• identifying the qualifications that are included in each industry’s national training package
• developing assessment guidelines for assessing whether or not required competencies specified in national training packages have been achieved by each trainee.

There has been widespread agreement in Australia to make vocational education and training more relevant to industry needs, rather than to continue with the previous system where training providers largely determined the content of vocational education and training courses.

However, the introduction of competency-based training has not been without controversy, which is to be expected with such a major reform. Certainly, the success of competency-based training has varied considerably across the sector.

Perhaps the most controversial element was to shift the focus heavily away from curriculum content and standard amounts of time in each level of training, towards assessing only the competencies required in each case. It has been argued that this is leading to a short-term focus on specific tasks and skills related to existing jobs, with insufficient emphasis on broader vocational knowledge and general skills that are required in the continuous shift in technological knowledge, particularly in emerging technologically based industries and occupations.

There have also been criticisms that the development of competency-based training in Australia has been overly complex and focussed on too much detail prescribed at the national level, with industry bureaucracies replacing the government bureaucracies that once existed.

Incorporation of a focus on the competencies needed in different areas of the labour market is an essential feature of any world class training system. However, care is needed to ensure general skills and more general vocational knowledge are also included, where appropriate, in vocational programmes so that training is not limited to the short-term and immediate needs of industry.

Longer term industry and national considerations are even more important. Those skills that will improve the future job mobility of individuals as nations continually adjust to the unrelenting pressures for structural and technological change are more important now than at any time in the past.

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