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

Context

Across Australia, outside the major cities, issues relating to skills development, skills shortages and the needs of newly burgeoning industries are being raised within many regional communities. These communities seek to not only build their social capital and increase community capacity, but also to position their local region to take advantage of the economic benefits accruing from current and expanding global markets. This positioning is especially evident in the strategic plans proposed by a number of regional development boards operating in localities across all Australian states and territories. These boards have a substantial interest in skills development and are highly visible in their regions; yet, little is understood about how they might use their leverage to ensure that training is matching the skill requirements of the enterprises that make up their membership.

Purpose

This research examines the notions of match and mismatch between vocational education and training (VET) delivery and need, or perceptions of need, by industry in regional locations. The research investigates how stakeholders, such as those connected to regional development boards, might use their local knowledge, in light of economic realities, to leverage providers to deliver appropriate skills development.

The research was guided by two key questions:

• In particular regions of Australia, how well does the range of VET offerings meet local skills needs based on realistic economic opportunities?
• How can VET become more mobile and/or flexible to meet those locally identified needs?

Scope

This study involved a three-stage collection of data to compare the views on how and whether needs are matched with learning. The first stage examined recent literature and web sources for regional course information that could be related to identified regional industries. The second stage involved telephone interviews with technical and further education (TAFE) institutes to find out: the ways in which they make decisions on course offerings; the flexible options they offer to learners and industries in relation to those courses; and their views on making their courses more flexible. The third stage investigated the regional industry view of skills development through the eyes of two regional development groups: the Limestone Coast in South Australia and the Cairns region in Queensland. In this stage, the research focused on questions about the negotiations undertaken by industries with training providers and covered: the leverage used to get courses operating; the solutions and funding accessed; the economic or industry factors that influence decisions; and how they relate economic opportunities to realistic local frameworks.

The final conclusions are presented in the form of a 'reality check' which compares the accepted view of regional skills development with how well training offerings in those areas are realistically, in economic and operational terms, meeting regional skill needs.

Key themes and findings

From the literature and from web searches

The literature reviewed for this study showed that there is no clear, or 'one size fits all', solution to answer the question of how training delivery can match skills development needs across regional Australia. The literature indicates that skill shortages relate to a variety of issues beyond basic provider capacity to develop and run training courses. As factors affecting training delivery operations, these issues include: the availability of personnel with technical skills and qualifications; the population; and the scale and the need for a diverse economic base. Such issues are set against the wages offered in regional industry by comparison with the mining and construction industries; the capacity of providers to address widely divergent needs; and a wariness on the part of business to invest in training when their staff are highly transient. At the same time, a number of successful strategies are being utilised in regional areas to encourage working people to engage in skills development. In addition, the literature identifies VET in Schools programs, which engage local industries and a range of partnerships, whether across adult and community education (ACE) and VET, industry and VET, or schools and workplaces, as an important strengthening aspect of the training approach in many regional localities.

From the web-based searches it appears that regional courses offered across the spectrum of TAFE institutes and private registered training organisations are able to match the identified current and emergent industries located in regional areas. This overview of courses relating to industry provides only apparent localised availability, as the reality of availability will depend on factors that are not measurable through this analysis.

TAFE and regional provision

Wide-ranging telephone interviews found that skills development and training offered by TAFE institutes to regional industry are influenced by a diversity of state government policies, economic situations, environmental impacts and sociocultural circumstances. It is also apparent that, while such diversity is reflected in the decisions made about courses being offered, there is much similarity across the regions in the way decisions arise, how programs are delivered, the level of flexibility available, and the views and experience of alternative options for that delivery.

Regional TAFE providers in the main consider that their courses are able to meet the majority of industry skill demands and the needs of learners who attend their institutes. They agree however that, with greater funding and infrastructure capacity, more emerging requirements could be met. TAFE structures its course offerings on both industry needs and on priorities that arise from state government direction, although these directions are often made on the basis of metropolitan influences as much as on regional skills development needs.

Findings from regional industry

This research found that regional industries are unanimously of the view that their current skill shortage predicament will not be resolved by the provision of more or additional training courses. The main concerns for industry are: having more people for the kinds of work available, who can then be trained on the job and attracting already skilled personnel who are prepared to live in a regional area. Consideration about access to training provided by external providers therefore largely takes second place to finding enough workers to keep businesses viable. Hence, while industries' learning needs may be matched by apparent regional training provision, other needs take precedence over provision.

In addition, the time lag that exists between identifying relevant courses and training and providing these courses may be too long to address industry's immediate needs economically. As a result, industry in regional areas has become adept at managing their skills development needs through a variety of strategies that do not necessarily use what local TAFE institutes are offering. Although industry has some leverage with TAFE providers as a result of their own negotiations and through their local development boards, private registered training organisations, who are quicker to develop the requested training than TAFE institutes, are often industry's first choice.

Conclusions

A reality check

This research found that, in line with the recent literature, it is funding, economies of scale, and labour personnel that do not seem to be keeping up with overall regional industry needs. Industry unequivocally acknowledges the complexities inherent to delivering training across the divergent needs of employees and prospective employees. As a result, enterprises have not only come to rely heavily on their own workplace training systems, but they also find it more economically viable to answer their immediate needs by skilling their employees through a mix of options from TAFE institutes, private registered training organisations and in-house trainers.

Limitations to the research

Industry training needs, as identified through regional development plans, were matched with regional course data. However, this process could not account for private registered training organisations based outside each specified region, since these would not appear on registers of local providers as delivering courses. As a result, it remains uncertain which other current or emergent learning needs for industry are being met by such providers.

This research is qualitatively based and, while the views of industry are taken from two divergent regions of Australia, those views are necessarily restricted by some generalisations. The regions participating in this study represent a wide industry base, from manufacturing through horticulture, to tourism. We acknowledge, however, that differing issues, needs and aspects of training and development may be occurring in any of the other 30 or more regional development areas where regional industries operate.