Page 3868 - Week 09 - Thursday, 25 August 2011
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The ACT has some of the nation’s leading tertiary education providers with national and international reputations in their respective markets. These exist within close proximity of one another and provide a broad range of qualifications to local and regional Australians and growing numbers of international students.
It proposed 12 recommendations that covered a range of suggestions for future development. It proposed, inter alia, that ACT tertiary providers form a fully integrated system, that they commit to achieving a vision of a learning capital, that an ACT tertiary education steering committee be established, that capital region employers build partnerships with education providers, that the ACT government support tertiary providers to engage in increased collaboration, that CIT and UC investigate new ways to collaborate, based on robust business planning and supportive evidence.
When you read the government’s response to Learning Capital on the DET website, it sounds quite encouraging:
The recommendations of the ACT Tertiary Taskforce reflect the Canberra Plan notion of the centrality of a well-educated and highly skilled population to the future of the ACT and the Government goal to ensure that each individual has the opportunity to reach their potential … Implementation of the recommendations will be the responsibility of a range of stakeholders across Government, education providers, industry and professional groups and the community … To realise the vision of a truly integrated sector will require a high degree of organisational and sectoral commitment, government encouragement and policy harmonisation.
But before there could be any work done on any of the recommendations, much less allowing time for the stakeholders across government, education providers, industry and professional groups and the community to start implementing them, we had another review. This time it was the Hawke review. Dr Allan Hawke delivered his assessment of the future for tertiary education, with recommendations to transfer vocational education and training to the Economic Development Directorate and to amalgamate the CIT and the University of Canberra.
Just as we were starting to seek answers in the estimates committee hearings about what all this might mean for the future of vocational education in the ACT, we learnt, almost by accident, that Minister Barr had initiated yet another review that apparently we were all meant to know about. He told us in estimates:
I have given a number of speeches on it. It is on my website.
Another announcement sort of by media release! I am not sure about the number of speeches. If you go to Minister Barr’s website, there is actually one speech in April that refers to what the task force suggested, an ACT tertiary education steering committee. He called it the Learning Capital Council. He suggested it would provide the opportunity for further collaboration. He said:
• Firstly, we will commission work to:
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