The nation's vocational education and training system will be centred on quality teaching and learning, under a revised National Agreement on skills signed up to at COAG today.
The revised National Agreement for Skills and Workforce Development aims to deliver a productive and highly skilled workforce.
Under the National Agreement, Governments will have to implement a National Training Entitlement, improve participation and qualification completions and assure the quality of training delivery and outcomes.
States and territories will have to set strict criteria to ensure only quality providers with an established record can access public funding.
States and territories will be required to provide strategies that will continue to support and strengthen the public providers of vocational education and training (TAFE) over the next five years.
The revised National Agreement includes the performance framework that will be used to assess progress against the COAG targets to:
* Halve the proportion of Australians nationally aged 20-64 without qualifications at certificate level III and above between 2009 and 2020; and
* Double the number of higher level qualification completions (diploma and advanced diploma) nationally between 2009 and 2020.
The National Agreement is the basis on which the Commonwealth Government will provide $7.2 billion in skills funding to states and territories over the next five years.
In addition the Commonwealth Government will provide $1.75 billion in funding to a Skills Reform National Partnership Agreement, as agreed at COAG today.
In total, that means the Government isproviding almost $9 billion of funding to the states and territories over the next five years to provide the skills that Australian businesses and individuals need to prosper in a rapidly changing economy.
These reforms promise to deliver far-reaching changes that will make a difference to the lives of millions of Australian working families.