Building the institutions of a national vocational education and training system

Australia has been building institutions for the provision of vocational education and training (VET) for most of its two centuries of history. Only in the last half of the 20th century, however, has VET emerged regularly as an issue of national policy. During these periods at the forefront of national debate, VET has been a continuing and sometimes contested issue in intergovernmental relationships. This publication, the author’s doctoral thesis was intended as a policy history of Australian VET viewed through the prism of the institutions which have been established at various times to coordinate, manage and control the public provision of VET. The focus is on institutions which are national in the sense that they have been developed by the Federal government with varying degrees of State participation, have been established by the States themselves with a national focus and the intent of concerted action or more recently, have been constructed as genuinely national, federalist institutions incorporating both Commonwealth and State functions and jurisdictions. The study argues that the crucial factor leading to the episodes in which VET entered the realm of high politics, and influenced the broader flow of Federal-State relations, was the convergence of value systems specific to VET with the dominant value system influencing national policy making. The conclusion highlights the oscillation of VET between the times it has occupied a place high on the national policy agenda, and the times when it has remained an essential but largely forgotten element of national life. Show less