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From the desk of the CEO-September 2017 newsletter address

APEC Conference, Indonesia

This month started with a visit to the Africa Down Under Conference 2017, hosted in Perth from 6 to 8 September. The event, now in its 15th year, has grown into the largest African mining-focused exhibition outside of the continent itself, thus becoming a must attend for government delegations, industry, and all stakeholders involved in the Mining sector. Following a difficult four-year period, the expectations about where the resources industry in Africa is heading are now positive, and the event suggested a growing sense of confidence in the sector and about Africa-Australia relations. In this scenario, TVET systems can play a significant role to ensure that the growing demand of national industries for skilled workers is matched locally.

Sustainable Skills has worked in a few African countries and Africa Down Under was a great means to renew  friendships and further relationships. We met with several African delegations who want to improve their TVET systems based on a modular Industry-led approach. We are exploring how we can assist.

Over the course of the month, I attended and presented the merits of Australia’s industry led TVET system at an APEC workshop on Vocational Education Linkage with Labour Market organised by the Indonesian Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education. The workshop was held in Makassar City, South Sulawesi, Indonesia on 23rd and 24th of August. The conclusion of the workshop recognised that Indonesia needs to provide a pathway to Industry-led TVET reform as per Australia’s system. Sustainable Skills is developing collaborative relationships with Indonesian Ministries including the Ministry of Manpower, Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education and Ministry of Industry. We are developing plans for Indonesians to develop the skills their industries need. President Jokowi is implementing a massive growth program focused on infrastructure resulting in the need for world standard local skills.

We keep strengthening our relationship with Indonesian partners, and we welcome to our team of TVET Experts Bruce Riseley M.Ed, Director of the ASCET branch in Jakarta since 2013. In this role Bruce is in charge for promoting the use of Australian Vocational Education Standards in Indonesia and the partnering of Australian Education Providers with Indonesian Educational Institutions.

The Uganda project has ramped up to its regular intensity, and our Team Leader Peter Merckx travelled to Kampala to meet with the Private Sector Foundation Uganda (PSFU) and with representatives of the World Bank. We are currently starting the Due Diligence stage of the project, aimed to verify, validate, and assess the quality, integrity, and completeness of the key information required to make a well-informed grant funding decision and avoid waste, fraud, and abuse. Scope of the project is to ensure that all material facts relevant to the funding decision have been revealed, and that all the organisations involved in the project are honest, reliable, and fully capable of executing their responsibilities under the grant agreements.

The transition from SkillsDMC to Sustainable Skills is continuing with some changes between our Board Directors, aimed to reflect the new scope of our business, and new Consultants joining our team of TVET Experts. The next stage of this transition is scheduled for the first week of October, and will see our team relocating to a new office in Chatswood. Follow our next newsletter to get more details about our new premises.

 

 

 

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Message from the Chair-August 2017

Michael Gill-Sustainable Skills Chair of the Board

One of the remarkable success stories in Australia’s recent economic history has been in tertiary education. Australian institutions have attracted very large numbers of foreign students and have developed a strong reputation, especially in our immediate region. Up to now, much of this has been the result of economic growth and rising middle class, notably in India and China. Most of this activity has been in and around Australian universities in Australia.

Sustainable Skills has developed a strong position in what may be a second wave of Australian education’s potential in our region and elsewhere. We have found that the Australian model of vocational education is both a natural fit and the preferred solution to a critical issue.

Substantial investment and opportunity has arisen in many communities in recent years as a result of improved governance or political reform. Where that has occurred it is common that governments find one substantial hurdle to the delivery of economic benefit. That hurdle is the lack of effective skills. Our work in many countries has been prompted by a realisation that vocational education and training is a critical component of economic development. In many cases, vocational education has been established but it is not aligned with today’s workplace. Or the courses are too expensive for people in low income communities. Or the standards are not effectively applied to ensure that students are correctly accredited. In some cases, there is no system, but a mixture of institutions aligned with different economic players in what often was a narrowly defined labour market.

Over many years, vocational education and training in Australia has refined characteristics that make it both effective and flexible in ways that are highly applicable in the situation of developing economies. Industry alignment is vitally important, providing the means to maximise the potential for job-ready students. Modular course design means that students may acquire skills incrementally, avoiding the often impractical requirement for years of full time study. Strong standards and accreditation management provide confidence and enhance the marketability of skills acquired. These are key attributes in our work today in a number of countries.

Some of our greatest opportunities are ahead. Indonesia and Myanmar are two neighbours in focus for us.

Indonesia, Australia’s nearest neighbour, has been on a path of gradual reform for almost 20 years. In recent years, steady economic progress has led to the ambitious program of President Joko Widodo for massive infrastructure investment. This program aims to deliver enormous expansion in power generation, large increments of transport infrastructure and a series of new facilities at key ports. Anyone familiar with Indonesia’s business conditions would be aware of the need for these improvements and of the value they will bring. But they will require millions of skilled people that today are not available in Indonesia.

Myanmar’s political reform came at a rapid pace from 2011, with first a relaxing of extremely tight controls by the military regime and then a popular election in November 2015 that returned an overwhelming majority to the democratic opposition, the National League for Democracy. However, the military-socialist regime in place from 1962 has left a large problem: Myanmar’s social infrastructure – its public service, legal system, education – is in poor condition, a brake on what could be quite rapid economic and social progress.

In our work we have witnessed in both Indonesia and Myanmar the gradual recognition of vocational education as a vital strategic factor and a high priority in public policy. In both cases, leading figures in government have indicated that the Australian system of vocational education is preferred.

Myanmar’s National Education Strategy Plan was released early this year after a number of years’ background research. The NESP gives high priority to vocational education, a new status that reflects both the urgent need to improve the employment prospects of younger people and the gap in skills available to meet the nation’s needs. As Myanmar implements its strategy for education, Sustainable Skills aims to play a number of roles in both supporting the execution of the plan and assisting with projects that increase the quality and supply of education and training places.

Indonesia’s focus on vocational education is at least partly driven by the demands of major projects that are in active planning. The imperative is very close to having deadlines. Our focus has been to offer support in policy development, consulting on specific sectoral projects and to work with potential local players in providing expertise to back new suppliers to the sector.

The flexibility of Sustainable Skills’ resources and well established background in the reality of providing strong outcomes has proven to be attractive to communities with real needs and opportunities. We are at an early stage of what presents at present as an extremely promising path.

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From the desk of the CEO-July 2017 newsletter address

Ben Rawlings, Sustainable Skills Director International Development Services, at Private Sector Foundation Uganda

Sustainable Skills awarded a contract sponsored by the World Bank to address skills shortages in Uganda

A significant milestone was achieved this month as Sustainable Skills has been officially awarded a consultancy contract sponsored by the World Bank to address skills imbalances and shortages in Uganda. Client of the contract is the Private Sector Foundation Uganda (PSFU) and this is the first non Australian government contract in the history of Sustainable Skills/SkillsDMC.

What’s the project about

The Government of Uganda received credit from the World Bank towards implementation of the Uganda Competitive Fund for employer-led short-term training which is part of the Uganda Skills Development Project (USDP) aimed to address prevailing skills imbalances and shortages in Uganda. An important element of the initiative is to facilitate collaboration between training providers and industry to promote demand driven skills development with special attention to innovative modes of training.

The grant component of USDP aims at:

  • supporting training activities that lead to improved productivity and competitiveness in the formal and informal sectors, hereby creating new income opportunities,
  • providing funding primarily for the improvement of the quality and relevance of existing skills systems,
  • prioritising innovative new approaches to skills development with special attention to micro and small enterprises.

Why Sustainable Skills is the right fit for this project

The technical proposal submitted by Sustainable Skills obtained an excellent evaluation from the committee, largely due to our ability to mobilise the highly skilled, highly experienced and well-suited local and international consultants to the task.

Our experience managing the National Workforce Development Fund for the Resources and Infrastructures Industries in Australia is positively recognised around the world, as well as our proven capacity to develop TVET strategies tailored to the local needs of each country. This unique background positions Sustainable Skills as a highly qualified partner to manage funds in the TVET sector worldwide, and determined PSFU decision to appoint Sustainable Skills as the TVET consultancy for this project.

What’s Sustainable Skill’s Role

Sustainable Skills team consists of highly experienced local and international TVET consultants, coordinated by Ben Rawlings, our Director International Development Services. The project involves two main steps:

  1. Due diligence: a fiduciary activity carried out to verify, validate, and assess the quality, integrity, and completeness of the key information required to make a well-informed grant funding decision and avoid waste, fraud, and abuse. Purpose of the due diligence is to ensure that all material facts relevant to the funding decision have been revealed, and that all the organisations involved in the project are honest, reliable, and fully capable of executing their responsibilities under the grant agreements.
  2. Capacity assessment: purpose of the capacity assessment is to ensure that the organisations supposed to deliver the skills training possess the required facilities, expertise and experience, such as competences of teaching staff, availability of learning material, management capacity, and the likeliness of being able to continue the activity beyond the time of the project.

We are looking forward to working with PSFU to implement this exciting Skills Development Project and we hope you’ll follow us over the coming months to get the latest updates on the project.

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From the desk of the CEO-June 2017 newsletter address

Nigel Carpenter, Sustainable Skills CEO

Nigel Carpenter, Sustainable Skills CEO

Welcome to the June edition of our Sustainable Skills newsletter!

The transition from SkillsDMC to Sustainable Skills is now officially completed. I believe it is worth retracing the pathway that our organisation has followed since the end of 2016, when SkillsDMC fifteen years’ experience as the Skills Service Organisation for the Resources and Infrastructure Industries, responsible for the development and maintenance of the RII Training Package, officially came to an end.

As a result, we have undertaken an important transition with the aim to enhance our consultancy experience building effective TVET systems worldwide, applying our proven methodology across a broader range of industrial sectors. The global consultancy activity was introduced over five years ago as a new focus to broaden and grow the SkillsDMC business. Since then, our TVET experts have helped a number of countries to improve their TVET systems including Mozambique, Zambia, Vietnam, The Philippines, and Timor Leste.

Over the last six months, our team concentrated its efforts on the development of new business opportunities. We have travelled to South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar exploring how we can support and assist the development of effective technical and vocational education and training systems worldwide. We have developed relationships with TVET authorities, Education Ministries and other government departments in most countries and are exploring a number of opportunities which would make a significant difference to maximise the performance of their TVET systems, developing local skills and supporting local economies.

We are now starting to see the first exciting outcomes of our work as we are in the process of signing a contract with the  World Bank which will see Sustainable Skills TVET experts, coordinated by Ben Rawlings, our Director International Development Services, leading a Skills Development Project managed by the Private Sector Foundation Uganda.  We are proud to say that our technical proposal has obtained an excellent evaluation from the committee, positioning Sustainable Skills as one of the leading TVET consultancy organisations in the world.

We believe that our expertise together with the Australian TVET best practice can support the development of successful vocational education systems, particularly in emerging countries, to ensure equal access to quality education, lifelong learning, and employment opportunities for all.

Over two decades of activity, SkillDMC has developed a number of training and assessment materials for the Resources and Civil Construction industries for Australian and International contexts. These products have been used by training providers and operating companies to meet the training and assessment needs of current and future workers of these industries. At Sustainable Skills, we believe that these resources form an important asset for the industry and we have decided to make them available through our new e-shop that is now fully renovated, hoping to offer our clients an improved customer experience.

In this monthly newsletter we are proud to introduce Sustainable Skills Chair of the board, Michael Gill, whose senior expertise in business strategy, with a strong focus on Asian markets, is significantly supporting our international activity. This month, Michael helped us to nurture the recently created partnerships with Myanmar, where an important reform of the national TVET sector is set as a priority on the government agenda. The Ministry of Education of Myanmar has recently launched a new National Education Strategic Plan (NESP) aiming to establish an accessible, equitable and effective national education system over the next five years with the ultimate goals of supporting a sustainable economic growth for the country and equipping local students with the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century.

As a key stakeholder in the Australian TVET sector, and as a consultant to the TVET authorities of a number of African and Asian nations, Sustainable Skills has extensive and niche experience in helping Governments and Industry to reform their TVET system and can assist Myanmar to design a program that will realise its educational goals. In this newsletter we are sharing an article that summarises a number of ideas about what the reform program could look like while specifying how Sustainable Skills could be involved in the process.

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Myanmar National Education Strategic Plan 2016-2021

Myanmar National Education Strategic Plan 2016-2021: enabling greater access, quality and equity in the TVET system

The Ministry of Education of Myanmar has recently launched a new National Education Strategic Plan (NESP) aiming to establish an accessible, equitable and effective national education system over the next five years. The ultimate goal of this plan is to equip local youth and adult students with the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century and to enable them to fulfil their career and lifelong learning aspirations.

The NESP roadmap clearly recognises the vital importance of developing an industry-led and competency-based TVET system able to train a skilled and competitive local workforce to support Myanmar’s long-term social and economic growth. In the coming years, Myanmar will need a large number of skilled employees, particularly for the agricultural, energy, manufacturing, infrastructure, livestock, fisheries and tourism sectors.

How Sustainable Skills can help

As a key stakeholder in the Australian TVET sector, and as a consultant to the TVET authorities of a number of African and Asian nations, Sustainable Skills has extensive and niche experience in helping Governments and Industry to reform their TVET system and can assist Myanmar to design a program that will realise its educational goals.

This article summarises a number of ideas about what the reform program could look like while specifying how Sustainable Skills could be involved in the process.

Allocate funding to enable grater access to TVET

Greater access to TVET requires expansion in the number of training places as well as the removal of barriers to enrolling in a training course or having one’s skills recognised.  Increasing the number of training places available is fairly simple, but can be done only after building the capacity of the system through substantial investment in facilities and skills of TVET educators. There are a number of models for how to manage this process, and Sustainable Skills can assist the Government of Myanmar in formulating an appropriate model and in designing a program, or in procuring the right implementation partner for a funding program.

Ensuring greater quality and alignment to labour market requirements

The adoption of industry-defined competency standards that can be packaged into skill sets and qualifications can help the Government of Myanmar to achieve its dual goals of graduates equipped with  skill sets required by industries and TVET curricula that meet local needs.

The use of standards allows for curricula to be regionally specific while maintaining consistency across training providers and aligning to the needs of industry. As the Australian Industry Skills Council for the Resources and Infrastructure Industries, these have been the core business for Sustainable Skills (as SkillsDMC) for nearly twenty years and our support can be instrumental to develop and implement these critical TVET components.

A mistake that is often made in determining the qualifications required for TVET trainers is to ignore the importance of industry experience. Questions need to be asked about whether TVET trainers and assessors require university qualifications, or whether competency in the disciplines that they are training is more important. Sustainable Skills can help the Government of Myanmar to find the right balance of education, competency and industry experience for its TVET workforce.

Creating a more effective TVET management system

As an independent and honest third party mediating between the needs of industry and the realities of Government, Sustainable Skills has developed a unique understanding of how TVET systems can be managed. When it comes to the cooperation of Government ministries with the private sector, Sustainable Skills has helped to develop industry representation with Government in Australia, as well as throughout Africa and Asia. A TVET Council model, such as the one aspired to in the NESP, should be industry-led without marginalising the needs of training sector and individuals.

Sustainable Skills has experience doing this both in Australia and in Africa (Mozambique and Zambia) and can assist the Government of Myanmar in conducting the stakeholder analysis, in approaching stakeholders to participate and in forming the structures that the Council will work within.  We’ve also provided advice and support to The Philippines and Vietnam in their efforts to implement a similar system.

Implementing a pilot program

The benefit of a pilot program is that it is contained and can have a specified end date, at which time the TVET Council, the Government and the consultants can evaluate the success of the programs and make changes to those programs before they are implemented more widely across the TVET system.  It will also be worthwhile to evaluate the extent to which capacity within the system has been developed at a Government, employer and training provider level, and determine whether additional capacity building is required or whether the market is ready to function and grow independent of external support.

We take great pride in assisting our partners to make the connection between international best practice and their local needs. Contact us for further information about how Sustainable Skills can deliver positive outcomes in your market or for your organisation.

 

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Guide to anticipating and matching skills and jobs

Guide to anticipating and matching skills and jobs

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), the UN agency specialised in promoting rights at work, encouraging decent employment opportunities, enhancing social protection and strengthen dialogue on work-related issues, has recently released a new volume of the series “Guides to anticipating and matching skills and jobs”.  The volume forms part of a compendium of methodological guides on anticipation and matching of skills supply and demand developed by the combined expertise of the European Training Foundation (ETF), the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) and the International Labour Office. This project aims to supply proper methodological tools particularly to developing countries, whose access to labour market information is often quite limited.

In a context of dynamic and complex labour markets, gathering intelligence on current and future skill needs can support better matching of training and jobs, which is of paramount importance for every country in the world. Skills matching can also help reduce unemployment, particularly among young people, build a better life for individuals by improving employability, social mobility and inclusion.

Accurate information and analyses are keys to effective education and employment strategies and to productive investments. Instead, the lack of intelligence can often result in the creation of structural problems in the labour market, problems for individuals in finding work, and problems for employers in finding appropriately skilled workers.

As the Australian Industry Skills Council for the Resources and Infrastructure Industries (RII), between 2003 and 2016, Sustainable Skills (formerly SkillsDMC) played a pivotal role to ensure that vocational education and training outcomes match the actual job market requirements. Sustainable Skills activity was focused on connecting industry, government, and training organisations to shape and maintain an effective TVET systems and frameworks through the development of the RII Training Package, which specifies the skills and knowledge required for workers to perform safely and effectively in the civil infrastructure, coal mining, construction materials (quarrying), drilling and metalliferous mining industry sectors.

In this role, Sustainable Skills activity  consisted of:

  • building Industry-led TVET,
  • providing updated and accurate intelligence to underpin the development of TVET systems and policy,
  • establishing industry committees able to identify the right skills needed by the labour market, and
  • setting up effective training programs able to form highly skilled workforces.

A tangible example of the intelligence provided by our organisation to the Australian RII Industry can be found in the  Resources and Infrastructure Industry Workforce Analysis and Forecast developed in 2016 with the aim to provide information and reasoned forecasts regarding the Australian Resources and Infrastructure Industry’s skilling needs, challenges and opportunities. In effect, this report serves as a long-term planning document for the rapidly transitioning Resources and Infrastructure Industry, and to prepare Industry participants for both the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Anticipating and matching skills with jobs is a core part of the solutions that Sustainable Skills offers to every country in the world to ensure that effective TVET systems are implemented across multiple industrial sectors. We applaud the ILO for producing such comprehensive resources but we also recognise that often access to information is only part of the solution. We know from our work that quality information coupled with mentoring, capacity building and support from experienced practitioners is critical to the short-term success of TVET reform, but also to the long-term sustainability of that reform.

Click here for further information about the compedium “Guide to anticipating and matching skills and jobs” release by ILO.

We take great pride in assisting our partners to make the connection between international best practice and their local needs. Contact us for further information about how Sustainable Skills can deliver positive outcomes in your market or for your organisation.

 

 

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From the desk of the CEO-April 2017 newsletter address

Nigel Carpenter, Sustainable Skills CEO

Nigel Carpenter, Sustainable Skills CEO

Welcome to the April edition of our Sustainable Skills newsletter!

Australia’s economic and political engagement with the immediate region and the world has evolved in recent decades, necessitated by rising living standards in Australia and improved economic opportunities in neighbouring countries. A key trend in this changing relationship with the region is the rise in trade in skills and education.

Today, technical and vocational education presents a very substantial opportunity for Australia in terms of the export of education services, which includes helping to establish and strengthen skills standards across the region. Australia is recognised as having a leading TVET system which reinforces the Australian reputation for international education and education services.

Vocational education is naturally parochial and requires close alignment with local industry and firm management of skills systems and frameworks, such as competency standards and quality assurance mechanisms to ensure the delivery of effective skills. Sustainable Skills provides consultancy that builds local capability to manage vocational education using Australian design.

As the Australian Indonesia Business Council said in its submission to the Indonesia-Australia Business Partnership Group (July 2016): “Indonesia-Australia cooperation in education, training and professional development is a perfect example of complementary comparative advantages. It will have close to the highest potential to activate transformational change in national economies and the economic relationship.”

Sustainable Skills has established successful partnerships that provide Australian vocational expertise, design and practice in developing countries. The evidence of this success has driven an acknowledgement in a number of countries of the effectiveness of Australian practices and nurtured a growing demand, especially in some of our immediate neighbours for Australian assistance and services.

Over the last few months, the Sustainable Skills team efforts have been entirely focused on the development of new business opportunities in the international cooperation sector, with the aim to consolidate our position as one of the leading TVET consultancy organisations in the world. Our work to date shows there is strong demand in developing and middle income countries for improved TVET systems and capacity building.

In April, our activity continued following this course as I had the opportunity to travel again to Indonesia and meet with KPPIP (Committee for Acceleration of Priority Infrastructure Delivery), the national inter-ministerial committee established with the main objective of coordinating the decision-making process and debottlenecking the delivery of Infrastructures projects to support the current country growth. KPPIP is facing the challenge to build the capacity of local agencies and workforces to deliver a new strategic infrastructure project in the energy sector, and Sustainable Skills long term expertise with capacity building programs in the infrastructure industry could be critical to the project success. I also travelled to Manila where I attended an Asian Development Bank conference where I was able to explore options of how we can work with the ADB as well as holding meetings with the Philippines Education Ministry and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).

At the same time, Sustainable Skills Chair of the Board, Michael Gill, travelled to Myanmar to explore potential opportunities for TVET project in the country. Michael has extensive knowledge and expertise in business strategy development projects with a focus on Asian Countries. He first visited China in 1978 and Japan in 1980 and he also travels regularly for business to India, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Myanmar and South Korea.

Sustainable Skills continues exploring opportunities in a number of African Countries. During April I traveled to Ghana to attend the Sustaining Competitive and Responsible Enterprises (SCORE) Convention organised in Accra by the Geneva- based International Labour Organisation (ILO) . The ILO SCORE program supports practical training and in-factory counselling that improves productivity and working conditions in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and is offered by ILO to a number of emerging economies in Africa, Asia and Latin America to offer SCORE Training to enterprises.

The trip to Africa presented me with the opportunity to travel to Nairobi to follow up on some of the meetings I had during my previous trip in February, including a promising discussion with Nairobi Water and Sewerage Co, the institution in charge of providing water and sewerage services to the residents of Nairobi.

As you may remember, last month Ben Rawlings, Sustainable Skills Director International Development Services, travelled to Uganda to negotiate our participation in a Skills Development Project managed by the Private Sector Foundation Uganda. The contract has not been finalised at this stage but is progressing through the World Bank procurement process and we hope to give you further updates in the next few weeks.  In addition to managing this ongoing process, Ben will also be attending Latin America Down Under in Perth during May to speak with ministers and other key stakeholders from Latin America about the skills challenges and opportunities facing the resources sector.

 

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