A cluster fund from the feds

Minister Robert invites people to apply for funding create industry clusters

Now minister for all things educational (CMM December 3) Stuart Robert urges “industry and businesses to “develop their applications for grants now.”

Details of the particular grants are here. They will go to successful bids to create “industry clusters” which will be “groups of aligned industries with a strategic leadership role to identify, forecast and respond to the current and emerging skills needs and workforce challenges of industry.” They will replace the 67 Industry Reference Committees, which presumably were supposed to identify, forecast and respond, but didn’t.

Anybody outside the training bureaucracy with the time, energy and optimism as to outcomes to get their heads around this has to March to apply

Since when do ministers have to gee-up people to ask for funding? CMM wondered. “When few have clues about what the money is meant to do,” a learned reader responded.