VET Partnerships: A Policy Imperative
Cliff Trood was previously on secondment with ICVET, specialising in the area of industry partnerships. Cliff is now back home in the North Coast Institute - Taree campus, working as Head Teacher, Engineering Services.
Innovation drives the emphasis on Partnerships
Vocational Education and Training (VET), by its very nature, has always had strong connections with industry. Full time VET teachers of industry disciplines come into the vocational education sector after working and building their skills, experience and industry contacts and networks. Casual and part time teachers, while still working in industry, provide a day to day connection too. Through these connection, every VET teacher brings into TAFE their industry contacts, networks and relationships.
It may then seem odd then, that despite a VET workforce that has a history of ongoing, significant and well established connections to industry and the workplace, VET reforms since the late 1980’s have continued to stress the need for a VET sector that is flexible and responsive to industry needs. But it is a recent renewed interest in innovation that has fuelled the drive to promote networks and VET partnerships with community and industry, arguing that they will be an enabler of economic development and the key to VET flexibility and responsiveness.
This paper sets out to build a better understanding of the context and rationale behind these policy imperatives.
Innovation needs Agile Systems
Partnership, networks, collaboration, joint venture and alliances are just some of the terms now frequently used in the second millennium to describe new ways of doing business in ‘the new economy’ (Living on Thin Air: the new economy. Charles Leadbeater, 1999, Penguin, London). These concepts are built around the notion of innovation and the attendant economic benefits from being first to market.
Successful systems draw on the knowledge and skills of a diverse range of people working as teams because, as Leadbeater points out ‘ideas for new products usually emerge from teams of people drawing together different expertise’ (p.13, 1999). This bringing together individuals or groups to share their collective knowledge leads us to the concept of knowledge as a resource that when shared creates new knowledge and new ideas.
Being first to market requires a business, production and marketing system that is agile in the creation and harnessing of new ideas, turning these ideas into new products and services and developing demand ahead of a competitor.
Innovation needs Knowledge Networks
Phillip Cooke (Knowledge Economies: clusters, learning and cooperative advantage, 2002, Routledge, London ) sees the rise of innovation clusters, such as Silicon Valley, as supporting the thesis that ‘knowledge is in the networks. Each move in the interactive innovation process requires learning by people, other than those involved in the preceding move’(p.2). It is therefore the learning value of networks that underpin the ‘new economy’.
Within networks there is a flow of knowledge, (its collection, distribution and management) that creates the potential for and production of innovative products and services. This flow of knowledge has the potential to enable a business, industry or economy to achieve competitive advantage in a global free market economy.
The Economic Importance of Education
During the 1990’s it was already becoming clear that the neo-liberal political influences in western democracies were embracing the economic rationalist approach to education. Simon Marginson (Education and Public Policy, 1993, Cambridge University Press) identified this shift in the Australian context in 1993 when he noted that, ‘economic rationalism’ has installed a free market economic agenda at the heart of education policy with the consequence that ‘the relationship between economy and education has never been stronger’.
Michael Peters argued that this new economic role for education is a ‘rediscovery of the economic importance of education (and is) …. fundamental to understanding the new global knowledge economy.’ (Michael Peters, National education policy constructions of the ‘knowledge economy’: towards a critique. 2001, Journal of Educational Enquiry V2 no.1)
The notion of a knowledge economy builds on this economic rationalist relationship between education and economy and not surprisingly, many governments have adopted the language and ideas around knowledge economy and embedded them into policy as they seek to globally position their nation states and build economic advantage and national prosperity.
The Australian Federal government’s response saw an Innovation Summit in 2000, followed in 2001 by a five year national innovation plan ‘Backing Australia’s Ability’ in 2001 to further evidence the emerging focus on innovation as a key economic driver.
Partnerships drive Reform
As a consequence of the new economic and innovation agenda, the VET sector, with its key objective being to provide industry with ‘a highly skilled workforce to support strong performance in the knowledge economy’ (Australia’s national strategy for vocational education and training 2004-2010, DEST 2003), has become an important target for reform policies.
Partnerships, it is argued, will drive reform by ‘translating the needs articulated by industry into quality, client focused training and assessment.’ The DEST strategy also underscores the importance of partnerships for innovation by connecting VET with innovation in its sixth strategy which reads: ‘Enable training providers and brokers to partner with industry to drive innovation’.
Partnerships a key to Regional Economic Growth
Furthermore, various reports concerned with regional development have called on the VET sector to become an integral part of the development process. Garlick, Taylor and Plummer (An enterprising approach to regional growth: Implications for the role of vocational education and training, 2007, NCVER, Adelaide), concerned that many regional growth theories are flawed, see a strategic role for regional VET where it should have a responsibility to ‘provide locally relevant options and to develop partnerships with business and institutions that have a local interest and where they can be a key partner in developing a creative future within a regional community’s competitive development agenda’ (p.41).
TAFE NSW Responding to COAG
It is clear that VET is now considered critical to economic performance and therefore it should be no surprise that at the State level government is also drafting and implementing policies to drive change in the VET sector. In NSW the recent Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal reviewed the State’s VET sector and emphasised the importance of partnerships in enabling VET providers to better meet the needs of industry and support economic development.The report states
‘The principal function of the TAFE Commission is to provide technical and further education services to meet the needs of individuals and the skill needs of the workforce. In a dynamic global market the business of TAFE NSW is to establish and nurture productive and innovative learning partnerships with individuals, companies, industries and communities (Up-skilling NSW, IPART, 2007).
More specifically the discussion paper makes five key commitments with the second commitment to: ‘Building a new relationship with industry and enterprises in partnership on workforce development at the regional and local level, to respond better to changing employer and employee needs and expectations’ p 6
TAFE NSW’s recent discussion paper ‘Doing Business in the 21st Century’, clearly articulates that TAFE NSW is responding to the Federal agenda: ‘We are responding to Council of Australian Governments (COAG) agreements and calls from employer representatives nation-wide, to address skill shortages and work in closer partnership with industry to build business success and strengthen the NSW economy’ (p6).
Elsewhere in the discussion paper partnerships are seen as the key:
- to build business success and strengthen the NSW economy’
- to respond better to changing employer and employee needs and expectations
- to harness that expertise more directly in designing services to suit local customers.
- to lead development of the national VET system
- greater utilisation of industry knowledge and maintenance of industry currency
Embed Partnerships into TAFE Culture
This paper began by pointing out that the VET teacher who came from industry was intrinsically connected to industry through networks and contacts. These networks and contacts were no doubt used from time to time as the need arose to support individual teacher needs, however they were essentially personal networks. What can be deduced from the policy rhetoric over the few years is the shift to embed the development of partnerships into the structure and day to day activity of VET organisations.
The drivers are clear – global economic performance, global economic advantage and national survival. Partnerships connect people from diverse backgrounds and enable the flow of knowledge that encourages innovation.
Nearly two years ago Peter Hind of CIO magazine wrote ‘There's no escaping it. The pendulum of business sentiment is swinging in a different direction. Research from organizations as diverse as The Financial Times, the Conference Board and McKinsey all report the same thing: CEOs around the world identify their major challenge as sustaining top line growth and increasing profits.
Gone, it seems, are the days when the executive board thought they could cost cut themselves to greatness. That avenue to improve the bottom line is nearly exhausted. Now there is recognition that if the business is to compete it must innovate (Innovate or Perish, Peter Hind 07 July, 2006 , http://www.cio.com.au accessed 5//5/08). A key strategy for achieving a more innovative culture is the utilisation of networks and partnerships.