Education - Archived Updates

25th March 2009 EDUCATION UPDATE

Structural Steel Detailer Qualification.
The Structural Steel Detail Drafting stream has successfully been added to the MSA30208 Certificate III in Manufacturing Technology and the MSA50108 Diploma of Manufacturing Technology.
Both are now available for official use in all states and can be obtained from the NTIS website as from the reference date of 19th March 2009.
The two new training packages can be found on the NTIS website at the following links:

Certificate III - Structural Steel Detailing package 
http://www.ntis.gov.au/Default.aspx?/trainingpackage/MSA07/qualification/MSA30208/rules
 
Diploma - Structural Steel Detailing package
http://www.ntis.gov.au/Default.aspx?/trainingpackage/MSA07/qualification/MSA50108/rules

This part of the project has now been successfully completed.
The Victorian Group of the AISD has been managing the Qualification Project Nationally and much thanks is due to this group of dedicated and passionate individuals for driving this package to where it is today. 
A Project Steering Group (PSG) has now been set up in Victoria to provide guidance and direction to the development of the course curriculum and delivery. The PSG is made up of nominations from relevant industry sectors, Skills Victoria, Steel Fabricators Association Victoria, Manufacturing & Engineering Skills Advisory Board (MESAB) and TAFE (Vic) plus five members of AISD (Vic/Tas).

The AISD members went into this meeting to find out how the Steel Detailing industry could best implement our new qualification nation-wide.
John Leworthy, leader of this project in Victoria, and Vice-President of AISD (Vic/Tas) has reported the outcomes of this first PSG meeting.
He has advised that Program delivery is a State responsibility and the implementation of programs will need to be negotiated state by state. The lack of apparent cooperation between States and Territories on these matters relates primarily to priorities and funding (State budgets). Constitutionally, each jurisdiction is responsible for primary, secondary and vocational education which includes TAFE. All States and Territories protect this right vigorously as you will have seen of late when the Fed’s suggest a common secondary curriculum.
In part this is why the national “Industry” competency standards were developed. For states to deliver a program leading to a national qualification the training programs must be based on industry competency standards; the delivery may be different but the competencies achieved should be consistent.

It is now apparent that each AISD state based group will need to undertake the task of achieving the training course delivery within their own state.
In Queensland, Clayton Roxborough, President of AISD (Qld) has held 2 meetings with Skillstech Australia (TAFE QLD) and Manufacturing Skills Qld to determine the situation in that State. He has confirmed that by and large, the Queensland situation mirrors that of Victoria.

Skillstech Australia have suggested that they may be able to deliver the course nationally but the hurdle of State funding would remain an obstacle for the AISD to tackle on a state by state basis.

It should be noted however that there are other options with regard to training development and delivery. So far TAFE is the only Registered Training Organisation (RTO) that the AISD has approached.

Questions that will need to be resolved are:
1	Which RTO in what state
2	Training Delivery:
	Classroom Distance education On-line Employer partnership
3	Marketing, do we call it a Traineeship or Cadetship
4	Text books -  we are currently planning on the Handbook being revised in time for publishing in early 2010 in time for the first in-take of cadets. The AISD (WA/NT) has this task in hand and will advise in due course of their progress.
5	And most importantly, how many trainees will there be in your state.

From the PSG meetng held in Victoria, it’s clearly impractical for one state to pave the way educationally for all the other states. 

John Leworthy will put to AISD (Vic/Tas) at their next committee meeting, that because of the situation acknowledged above, Victoria can no longer manage this project on a national level or be held responsible for the national outcome.

John said “While I recognise the 2008 national steering committee chose this decision in November 2008, it is not a workable direction”.

He goes on to say that, logic suggests that each state group could be best served by the addition to the national website of an 'Education' hot key in the web page for each state. This would allow each state group to communicate any relevant progress independently and in turn, it would allow all other states to access and evaluate both progress and content. 
If each state has their own 'education' page, then they can post their own process and specifics for all others to observe.

Establishing a clear direction on this issue should be a priority for your State Management Committee in coming months.
If you have any specific questions on how to engage the training fraternity in your state or what steps to take next, please feel free to contact either John Leworthy or Clayton Roxborough to discuss.

28th January 2009 EDUCATION UPDATE

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) endorsement process is now complete with MSA's final submittion for both courses signed off at all relevant stages in Dec 2008 and will shortly be uploaded to the NTIS website.

The new structural steel detailing specialist stream applies to the following endorsed qualifications:

MSA30208 Certificate III in Manufacturing Technology.

MSA50108 Diploma of Manufacturing Technology

Now that the development of a national qualification pathway in structural steel detailing is complete, it should be acknowledged that there is an enormous amount of preparation work ahead to be undertaken to both achieve delivery and to attract suitable student candidates. Therefore start up should be aimed for and seen as achievable by first semester 2010.

The following points need to be kept in mind when considering future options for training delivery:

There is a split between national and State responsibilities in Vocational Education &Training. The development of qualifications for Training Packages is a national responsibility funded by the Commonwealth and outsourced to Manufacturing Skills Australia (MSA) while the delivery of training is either publicly funded by States or else is privately funded through fee for service arrangements.

Incentives for employers to take on trainees, apprentices or cadets under Technology Cadetship arrangements are paid through DEEWR. They generally carry a requirement that the trainee, apprentice or cadet is studying an endorsed Training Package based qualification.

The fact that a qualification is endorsed does not guarantee either funding of delivery by a State Training Authority. However States will not generally fund delivery unless a qualification is nationally endorsed or is State accredited.

There are many criteria different States will use in making a decision as to whether a qualification should be publicly funded based or not. Some of these are:

• whether a student is under a contract of training i.e. an apprenticeship, traineeship or a technology cadetship. States generally give the highest funding priority to training related to contracts of training
  
  

• the proposed training is in an industry, occupation or region that the State regards as an economic or social priority
  
  

• the extent of demand i.e., high student demand areas may get priority over qualifications with low student numbers
  
  

• the extent of investment required to deliver the training e.g. machinery and other equipment costs, professional development of teachers, need to hire new full time or part time teachers, cost of developing learning resources etc.
  
  

• whether the student is regarded as disadvantaged
  
  

Steel Detailing Training Delivery

As steel detailing is a relatively small and not well known occupation, discussions on training delivery should commence soon in each State. Usually States will set their next year delivery program by October of the previous year.

During the consultations on developing the SSD qualifications, indications of a willingness to deliver Structural Steel Training were given by several TAFE Institutes in Victoria and by TAFE NSW. It's believed that both of these responses were qualified by being subject to adequate numbers. The normal requirement for campus based delivery in most TAFE systems is twelve students. We are not aware of similar indications in other States although strong interest in the qualifications was received from Challenger TAFE in WA.

A suggested program of action is:

• Each State Institute to survey members by email to get definite indications of likely student numbers for campus based delivery. The aim should be to generate at least 12 students in each State for 2009. The survey should also promote the idea of taking on people as a cadet under Technology Cadetship arrangements as this increases the funding priority
  
  

• TAFE Institutes in each State should be approached to ascertain interest in delivery. The interest of the TAFE Institutes would probably be increased if the approaches were to also include offers of assistance with provision of detailers to act as P/T teachers and with developing learning resources
  
  

• The AISD should also discuss a preferred external delivery RTO. NSW through its OTEN Campus (Open Teaching and Education Network) based within Western Sydney Institute and TAFE Queensland through its Open Learning Institute at West End both have large external studies operations. Similar capabilities probably also exist in other States.
  
  

The MSA endorsed documents can be download from the following PDF attachments.

** These documents are the final draft endorsement package only. No official use shall be made of them until the final package appears on the NTIS website

The AISD takes this opportunity to thank both MSA and Richard Jenkins for their considerable effort in creating these ground breaking courses for our Industry and its long term future.


Project update - August 2008

Steel Detailer Qualification

Now that the development of a national qualification pathway in structural steel detailing is nearly complete, it is appropriate for the to consider what further actions need to be undertaken to ensure that training is available in steel detailing. As the vocational education and training (VET) system is very complex Richard Jenkins from the MSA has written this update to provide background information for further AISD and State Institute discussions.

The following points need to be kept in mind when considering future options for training delivery:

- There is a split between national and State responsibilities in VET. The development of qualifications for Training Packages is a national responsibility funded by the Commonwealth and outsourced to Manufacturing Skills Australia (MSA) while the delivery of training is either publicly funded by States or else is privately funded through fee for service arrangements.

- Incentives for employers to take on trainees, apprentices or cadets under Technology Cadetship arrangements are paid through DEEWR. They generally carry a requirement that the trainee, apprentice or cadet is studying an endorsed Training Package based qualification.

• The fact that a qualification is endorsed does not guarantee either funding of delivery by a State Training Authority. However States will not generally fund delivery unless a qualification is nationally endorsed or is State accredited.
  
  There are many criteria different States will use in making a decision as to whether a qualification should be publicly funded based or not. Some of these are:
  
  - whether a student is under a contract of training i.e. an apprenticeship, traineeship or a technology cadetship. States generally give the highest funding priority to training related to contracts of training
  
  - the proposed training is in an industry, occupation or region that the State regards as an economic or social priority
  
  - the extent of demand i.e., high student demand areas may get priority over qualifications with low student numbers
  
  - the extent of investment required to deliver the training e.g. machinery and other equipment costs, professional development of teachers, need to hire new full time or part time teachers, cost of developing learning resources etc.
  
  - whether the student is regarded as disadvantaged
  

Steel Detailing Training Delivery

As steel detailing is a relatively small and not well known occupation, discussions on training delivery should commence soon in each State. Usually States will set their next year delivery program by October of the previous year. The Steel Detailers Forum in Perth in September should include a review of options for delivery in each State and perhaps one option for external

(correspondence/ internet based delivery) that can act as a fall back option for all States.

During the consultations on developing the SSD qualifications, indications of a willingness to deliver Structural Steel Training were given by several TAFE Institutes in Victoria and by TAFE NSW. It's believed that both of these responses were qualified by being subject to adequate numbers. The normal requirement for campus based delivery in most TAFE systems is twelve students. I am not aware of similar indications in other States although strong interest in the qualifications was received from Challenger TAFE in WA.

A suggested program of action is:

• Each State Institute to survey members by email to get definite indications of likely student numbers for campus based delivery. The aim should be to generate at least 12 students in each State for 2009. The survey should also promote the idea of taking on people as a cadet under Technology Cadetship arrangements as this increases the funding priority
  
  

• TAFE Institutes in each State should be approached to ascertain interest in delivery. The interest of the TAFE Institutes would probably be increased if the approaches were to also include offers of assistance with provision of detailers to act as P/T teachers and with developing learning resources
  
  

• The AISD should also discuss a preferred external delivery RTO. NSW through its OTEN Campus ( Open Teaching and Education Network) based within Western Sydney Institute and TAFE Queensland through its Open Learning Institute at Westend both have large external studies operations. Similar capabilities probably also exist in other States.
  Release of Structural Steel Detailing qualifications for comment
  

Manufacturing Skills Australia which is the national Industry Skill Council for Manufacturing has released a second draft of a Certificate III and Diploma pathways in Structural Steel Detailing for public comment. The drafts which were prepared by Richard Jenkins & Associates available on the MSA web site www.mskills.com.au

You are encouraged to examine the drafts and to make comment back to the AISD.