Summary of consultations

The Australian Government is committed to helping students improve, and demonstrate, their employability skills. Employability skills are generic skills that employers have identified as important, such as team work and communication.  The Government proposed a Job Ready Certificate that would help school students undertaking vocational education and training (VET) in school to demonstrate their employability skills to employers. The proposal was designed to respond to concerns that current arrangements do not give employers a clear picture of key employability skills. The Government undertook broad national consultation to test the proposal.

Professor Richard Sweet, an education and training consultant with international experience, was engaged to write a discussion paper to inform the national consultations. The paper sought responses to key issues critical to the successful implementation of a certificate, exploring a wide range of issues including: how and where job readiness should be assessed; what should be assessed, who should award the certificate; what should appear on it; and how would it fit in with existing arrangements in upper secondary and vocational education, including the Australian Qualifications Framework. Consultations were undertaken with representatives from state and territory education and training authorities, employer groups, business and community organisations. Over 200 people attended the consultations from around 100 organisations, and 52 written responses to the discussion paper were received.

The outcomes of the consultations showed that there was general support for many of the key principles of a proposed Job Ready Certificate, however there were several reservations. It was commonly felt, by both educators and industry, that:

• young people would benefit from a greater focus on developing employability skills, and the associated personal attributes, rather than certifying them
• the personal attributes were very important, if not more important than employability skills, yet very difficult to assess
• assessment should occur in the workplace, and preferably in several workplaces, and that this was likely to create a burden on employers
• all Australians could benefit from a greater focus on employability skills, not just school students undertaking vocational education and training.

On the basis of feedback, the consultant concluded that greater benefit might come from other policy initiatives such as: strengthening the empirical base of the employability skills framework, including the personal attributes; making employability skills explicit (rather than embedded) within Training Packages; and strengthening workplace assessment practices.