The year is certainly in full swing again. The AVETRA Educator Hub has been a bit quiet over the summer – and what a summer it has been!!! I’ll leave the commentary on scientific explanations of our weather to much more informed sources than me.
Like record-breaking features of this past summer, let’s hope that there will be record-breaking features of this year’s No Frills Conference conducted by NCVER. It’s always a great highlight of my research calendar. I hope it’s on yours too.
I am just taking this afternoon to make sure I can meet the deadline for submission of abstracts: Monday 18 February. That leaves a couple of weeks, even if you hadn’t thought yet about making a presentation, or even preparing a poster. Perhaps this little reminder will be the motivator you need if you are currently considering or completing some research.
I am very interested in The Student Journey as it relates to many of us older hands, and newcomers to the industry undertaking the TAE40116 qualification. As you have probably observed there is an absolute flurry of activity in the qualification with the changes to the Standards for RTOs (2015) Clauses 1.14 (b) and 1.15 (b). So I thought it would be interesting to review the characteristics of organisations skilling for life the practitioners in our own industry – VET. It seems to me the experiences of this group might impact very significantly on the industry overall in the next five to ten years. I will provide an overview of enrolments and completions across the years 2014 – 2017, using NCVER stats. Hopefully you will find this area of investigation interesting too, and I would be really excited to get any comments from you below.
Anyway, enough about my efforts for the exciting No Frills event. It would be great if you would like to comment below on any research you are considering or have recently completed which you think fits the No Frills theme. I am sure all of our members, those based in Australia and our international members, would be really interested. So go on … make a comment below and share with others. It’s always worthwhile. See you in Adelaide from 10 – 12 July for some informative, inspiring and I’m sure social experiences!
AVETRA Educator Hub 
Hi there
I was a teacher at TAFE NSW for 15 years before moving to NZ and working as a Senior Lecturer at Otago Polytechnic. As a teacher at TAFE I maintained my currency and ensured that I met all of the requirements of my role, including the TAE4. I did not gain any real benefits from the TAE apart from maintaining my teaching role, there was no real learning involved and new employees coming from Industy with no prior teaching knowledge would struggle to gain the skills they really need for teaching from the completing the TAE.
Here at Otago Polytechnic, each new staff member upon commencement of employment is enrolled into the Graduate Diploma of Tertiary Education. The cost is met by the organisation and this is a Level 7 qualification that uses an Experiential model to provide learners with the training to design learning (lesson plans, content, assessments), deliver quality learning, and assess and provide feedback. This comprehensive degree programme is undertaken while teaching so our teaching staff our learning while they are teaching in an authentic environment with support from the Learning and Teaching Development team.
The feedback we receive from the delivery of this programme is very positive, especially from out new teaching staff that come from trade industries.
I think the Australian Vocational Education system should look at this type of programme for teaching staff, instead of a token Level 4 certificate.
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