The recent Skills Ministers’ Communique showed all Ministers are clearly focussed on ASQA and its performance

BY CLAIRE FIELD

 The Communique stated that:

* effective regulation is central to the quality of and confidence in the VET sector

* the national regulator, ASQA, should improve its engagement with the VET sector and expand its educative role

* the Braithwaite Review and the Joyce Review emphasised that it is critical to ensure that training providers are aware of, and supported to understand, their compliance requirements, and that regulatory decisions are transparent

Ministers went on to call for immediate work to be done to reform ASQA’s regulatory approach, improve confidence in the regulator and support continuous improvement in training provision across the VET sector.

When you look at what ministers are calling for it is clear that they are expecting significant cultural change to occur within the organisation. Based on the experiences of providers that I am familiar with (and the more balanced comments on social media) senior staff within ASQA have some hard thinking to do about whether they can genuinely shift to new ways of working with those they regulate.

Claire Field advises on VET, international education and private higher education.