Review - Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research

As a consequence the role of government in VET can be regarded as a constant tension between the
location of VET in industry, its different occupations, and their communities and organisations of
employers and workers and the perceptions of government of the failure of VET systems to meet
national economic needs and to contribute to the social objectives of employment in an optimal
manner. This tension has been especially manifest in the UK where over recent decades the
continuation of the voluntarist principle and the principle of a more contestable training market, have
been accompanied by a continued pattern of government interventions. In Germany VET policy has
been dominated by the need for state intervention to underpin the failure of industry to provide
enough employment places for the school leavers who want to enter the dual system of
apprenticeships. In Singapore, VET is seen in part as a type of ‘social wage’ that acts as a substitute
for the absence of state regulated wages.
In Australia, the most recent and formative period for the VET system was prompted by a sense in the
mid 1980s of economic crisis and market failure in VET. Because of the depth of the perception of
market failure, the particular Australian arrangements for the governance have become relatively
government centric. Skill standards, qualifications, provider registration and quality assurances are all
conducted through state or state sponsored agencies. Even industry participation in the Australian
VET system is government agency supported and brokered.
VET and education systems
The Australian VET system is arguably the most separate from the education sectors among all
OECD countries. In comparison to all other OECD countries, in Australia more school age students in
education and training are at school and undertaking a generalist course (OECD, 2007). While VET in
schools is being undertaken by about 36 per cent of students, it is mainly in the form of one subject at
Year 11. The Australian VET sector is also relatively separate from the university sector (Moodie,
2008). The governance of Australian VET therefore is highly autonomous from the wider education
system. Furthermore, the particular federalist structure of VET governance in Australia has increased
this autonomy (Keating, 2009), although recent developments through the Council of Australian
Governments and the Bradley Review of Higher Education (2008) may weaken this effect.
This high degree of separation is not the same in most other countries. Germany represents the most
obvious case of the location of most initial VET in schools. In Singapore, initial VET, or really
technical and vocational education and training (TVET), is located in the schools sector, and a large
element of continuing TVET is located in the tertiary sector under the administration of the Ministry
of Education. The relative lack of national governance in Canada has reduced VET’s isolation from
the schools and higher education sectors in Canada because of the tendency to locate governance for
all education and training in single agencies.
These contexts need to be considered within the comparative study. Without such understandings
there is a considerable danger of simplistic comparisons and possibly of inappropriate imports.
Political and administrative systems
There also are differences in characteristics of the entity of a nation and a nation state. The UK nation
state contains four nations, and in the case of Scotland the national identity is closely linked to its
education system. This has had a direct impact on the nature of the UK VET system, including its
regulatory and quality assurance systems. Canada also accommodates Anglophone and Francophone
nations that have a high and strongly defended degree of autonomy through their respective provinces
and provincial governments.
Four of the six sample countries (including Australia) have two levels of government across which
their VET systems are located. Three are federations—Australia, Germany and Canada—and the UK
has formally devolved significant elements of its VET systems to regional governments. As a
consequence the legislative and administrative bases of VET across each country are different.
Singapore and New Zealand are small states with single levels of government (apart from local
government in New Zealand), but differ in their economic and geopolitical contexts.
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