2016-17 Skilled Occupations List (SOL) has been registered on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. The review of the SOL was conducted by the Department of Education and Training.
The SOL identifies occupations that would benefit from independent skilled migration for the purpose of meeting the medium to long-term skill needs of the Australian economy, where such needs may not be more appropriately met by sponsored migration programs or up-skilling Australians.
For the first time, the National Centre for Vocational Education Research’s (NCVER), major survey of VET students will include fee-paying students at private colleges.
Over coming weeks around 220,000 students will be asked about their recent training experience as part of the Student Outcomes Survey.
NCVER Managing Director Dr Craig Fowler said that, to date, only students who studied with government providers, such as TAFE, or those whose training was funded by governments were included in the survey.
“Now we’re also asking students who paid their own way to rate their training too. This will give us a better idea of how the sector is performing,” he said.
Results from the survey will be available in late 2016.
The concept of ‘reasonable adjustment’ is important and must be considered. This means that the summative assessment process may be modified so that individual participants are not disadvantaged. For example, a learner with a disability, or with issues relating to language, literacy or numeracy may require some adjustment to the assessment process.
In accordance with the Disability Standards for Education (2005), education providers are under a positive obligation to make changes to reasonably accommodate the needs of a learner with a disability. Reasonable adjustments can be made as required, as long as competence is not compromised.
We make changes to reasonably accommodate the needs of learners to ensure:
they have the same learning opportunities as other learners.
they have the same opportunity to perform and complete assessments as other learners.
For example, such a learner could be asked to demonstrate a work process rather than being asked to explain it in writing.
It is important to always provide the following information to your students, trainers and compliance officers:
Students with carer responsibilities, cultural or religious obligations, English as an additional language, disability etc. can request for reasonable adjustments.
Please note, academic standards of the unit/course will not be lowered to accommodate the needs of any student, but there is a requirement to be flexible about the way in which it is delivered or assessed.
The Disability Standards for Education requires institutions to take reasonable steps to enable the student with a disability to participate in education on the same basis as a student without a disability.
Trainer/Assessor must complete the “Reasonable Adjustment Strategies Matrix” to ensure the explanation and correct strategy have been recorded and implemented.
Trainer/Assessor must notify the administration/compliance and quality assurance department for any reasonable adjustments made.
All evidence and supplementary documentation must be submitted with the assessment pack to the administration/compliance and quality assurance department.
A table has been provided below to list different categories where reasonable adjustments can also be made, possible issues associated with each category and reasonable adjustment strategy that you can apply:
Trainers don’t just train. They listen, they learn, they plan, they adapt, they help, they soothe, they challenge and they tolerate.
Students expect all this, and often more besides. But, for a Trainer to be effective at training, they must be very clear about what is most important.
Fortress Learning gave it some thought and came up with the following list – it is not everything, but it captures what they believe the most important things are. And it doesn’t matter if it is the Cert IV TAE or Diploma of Business or something entirely different, if we get this right, then we have the best chance of success.
