When the Australian Qualifications Training Framework (AQTF) was introduced in the 1990s it was designed to link skills to jobs to pay. To provide transportability in skills across employers, industries and regions. To give some clarity in a field where for decades a mix of apprenticeships based on the old "master/student" approach dominated the workplace. To give access to basic training for hundreds of thousands of employees who had not seen any formal training since they left school. Ih these areas it did a great job.
The idea of standardising the skill sets, creating a national bureaucracy (originally ANTA) and driving change through linking education grants to the AQTF came later. When it did start to draw the themes together, the national administrative system started to gather strength and to take control over curriculum and delivery and funding,
As with many well meaning policies at the national level, the administrative and regualtory "tail" began to wag the "industry" dog. This is not to say that industry was squeaky clean in the mix. Many sectors and companies resisted the AQTF model from day one, and still do. They still prefer non transportable skill sets in order to lock employees into their organisation, and they definitely do not want skills linked to pay scales.
However, the balancing act between skills for the job and the need for standards in training both miss the point. The real issue at the heart of skills and job design is the extent to which it is possible to unhook individual skills from group work. We are now in the absurd situation where those who are welded to the individual skills approach try really hard to introduce "team skills" to the packages - to put into the packages something that should have been the basis of learning from the beginning.
Work, unless you are a hermit on a desert island, like Tom Hanks in "Castaway", ALWAYS Involves more than one player. Even Tom Hanks' character had a coconut as a friend and co-worker! Since the Industrial Revolution (and before) people have worked in groups. The notion on individual skills was a product of the division of labour, and later Taylorism, but even this disaggregated view of work admits an aggreation into assembly lines and teams.
Work, is a social and collective activity. Job design supports this, not the other way around. The entire AQTF system presumes that skills packages and subsequent curriculum are there to be delivered to and absorbed by an individual worker. The notion of team learning and team skills are reduced to add ons in this basic system. It is, to put it in the terms of most workers " A*** about face". The work defines the job, not the other way around - is that so hard to understand?
Work is messy, chaotic and organic. SKills sets only apply in the limited and repetitive world of theoretical assembly lines. Offices, garages, shops, schools, mines, ships, trains and all aspects of our world are part of the messy ecology of work. Jobs and skills in groups are needed to deliver the goods and services. Goods and services are delivered through complex and intricate systems of poduction and logistics. In some areas we even have "prosumption" in which consumers participate in production. Who will argue that in this model we need a mandatory skills package for individual consumers?
The time has come for the dog to wag the tail. Industry needs to reassert itself over the adminstrative system. The smart and dedicated bureaucrats need to get out more. The 21st Century demands a skills and training system that starts with the assumption that the competency based framework that did such good work in the 20th Century may not be appropriate for this Century.
The starting point must be a recognition that knowledge and skills combine in workplaces amongst many individuals and are exercised when they are needed. This may mean different people exercising different skills at different times, to differing levels of need. It involves formal and informal learning and knowledge, mentoring, group decisions, teamwork, consultation, and occassionally the exercise of individual skills by themselves - but not very often.
More than this skills, pay, working conditions, safety, social interaction, technology and organisation are all intimately linked and cannot be so easily separated. To talk of a "skills package" is far removed from real work. The AQTF should be renamed the Australian Workplace Learning System. SKills Councils should become Learning Networks and their resources dsitributed to regions and industry groups. The entire monitoring and reporting system showed be web based, automated and left in the hands of industry.
Then we can argue over the appropriate level of funding, the way in which corporate skills and knowledge are transferred, and the manner in which workplaces become more productive. After all, is that not the reason for our focus on skills in the first place?