.

We think the funding of ALNARC is extremely important for two reasons. Firstly, we think it's important that the research community help us in our endeavours to build the National Training Framework. The consortium is doing that very explicitly in relation to some of the projects it is carrying out. Secondly, and just as importantly from our perspective, we want to build the research culture in adult literacy in this country. We want an Australian adult literacy culture research built and maintained. And we want that to have a very strong national perspective. We think that the way we've done it promises that it might be achieved. Now of course it's much too early to say how this system is going to work. We've tried to build an organisation which is based in universities all around the country but working together on very important projects. In two or three years time, we'll be able to judge how effective that's been. But let no one be in any doubt about our commitment to trying to ensure that that research community develops into a vibrant and effective adult literacy research network.

Before I talk about language, literacy and numeracy issues in training packages, I want to talk a bit about training packages. I think it's very important to understand what we are trying to achieve here. The National Training Framework within which the training packages operate does two fundamental things. First of all it regulates training outcomes. It says that industry shall define what the outcomes of the training system are. And we do that by defining units of competency or workplace standards in the training packages. They represent the outcomes of the system. That's a big shift in itself. The other fundamental pillar of the National Training Framework is that we have deregulated delivery. We have basically said: "we have defined the outcomes; how they are delivered is up to the teaching/training profession".

I've heard lately that people are arguing that we've denied the VET teaching profession its professionalism. On the contrary, the National Training Framework actually exalts it. It challenges the profession in situations where there aren’t a lot of so-called curriculum materials available to deliver the product. I'll have that argument with anybody about whether or not we've attacked professional teachers and trainers in the VET system because I think the training package approach provides them with an opportunity that they've never had before. I know it's difficult to accept that somebody else is defining an outcome. And I suspect that's where some of the resistance and some of the defensive noises we've heard are coming from. The right to define the outcomes, we say, should belong to industry. It’s in the workplace that the final judgement has to be made about the effectiveness of Vocational Education and Training. And if that's the case (some people will argue with that assumption) then it's quite logical that industry should define the outcomes.

In a nutshell, what training packages do is link workplace standards with VET qualifications. That's what they're all about. They define workplace standards as units of competency and they package units of competency together in certain ways that lead to VET qualifications. This is not an easy task. In some senses, writing the standards has been easier than defining the qualifications. You've no idea the struggles that go on within industry about how the units ought to be packaged to lead to qualifications. That's at heart what it's about. We link workplace standards with VET qualifications.

The other important characteristic of the National Training Framework is that it's national in character. And that is another fundamental issue that we are all struggling with at the moment. You have national training packages. They define workplace standards on a national basis. They define national VET qualifications. Hence we do have to have some consistency in assessment outcomes. We have to have a lack of diversity, if you like, in terms of the outcomes but not in terms of the delivery.

All the states and territories are starting to understand some of the implications of having a truly national system. From one perspective the training package and the National Training Framework are revolutionary. But they're not really. They are evolutionary, in the sense that they actually built upon the training reforms that have been developed over the last 10 or 15 years in this country. Competency standards have been around for along time. What we've done is basically mandate them and say they represent the outcomes of the training system. That's the radical step that's been taken.

There are a number of implications that I'll get to in a moment. One of the fundamental questions that we have to ask about training packages is: do they provide enough data, information and intelligence to allow for effective assessment against the units of competency? There is a range of different kinds of units of competency that define workplace standards. Some of them are mainly technical in character. Many are to do with generic skills such as communication. But probably the majority are a combination of technical and generic skills especially skills requiring language, literacy and numeracy. And that is where the real problems begin in terms of assessment.

It's not just a question of assessing technical competence or competence in communication. It's most often a question of assessing both, usually at the same time. This, of course, has some implications for the way teachers go about their job. It means for example that the teaching and assessment process that in the past has been basically compartmentalised as either technical or communication, can in many cases now be brought together.

Fundamentally the training packages are going to require changes in the practice of VET teaching and training. That's about the hardest thing to achieve: getting people to change the way they work. I don't think we should try and diminish what is being asked for here. There is a huge challenge being provided to training organisations in terms of the way they go about their business. This is especially so in this area of technical and the generic skills. How do you do it? How do you deliver it? How do you assess it when the technical and the generic are most often intermingled within a unit of competency?

The answer to my question as to whether training packages provide enough data, information and intelligence to lead to effective assessment is probably "yes" but also "not good enough yet". It's important to understand that in developing this radical, if not revolutionary innovation of training packages, we didn't do any research and development or carry out pilot projects. They were simply introduced. We are doing the research and development as we go. You can argue about whether or not that was a smart thing to do but political imperatives being what they are, there was probably no alternative.

We are finding that, as we continue developing these things called training packages, issues of a very serious and fundamental nature keep cropping up. And we've got to tackle them on the way. We've tried to do it within ANTA in a number of ways. I think this year 2000 will be the real test as to how effective we've been in tackling some of these issues.

At the moment there are nearly fifty training packages out there. They cover very significant proportions of the work force. They are now starting to be delivered on a substantial enough scale for people to be able to make judgements about their efficacy. At bottom, this is about whether there is relative ease of assessment against the units of competency. That's the issue in my view. I think we're going to get different responses, different kinds of feedback about that.

We have had difficulty within ANTA in communicating the need to embed the generic skills, communication skills and so on, in the units of competency in a way that leads to ease of assessment. We've even had difficulty understanding ourselves, making sure that all the people in ANTA who work with Training package developers properly understand the issues. That's not surprising, but I think we're starting to get there.

One of the important indicators is a recent technical document, Process for Training Package Development. It sets out in considerable detail the steps developers have to follow when developing a Training package. It makes about sixteen references to language, literacy and numeracy issues and the need to embed them appropriately in the units of competency. There are a number of checklists (and other devices) in this document which stress to developers the importance of that process. The important thing, of course, is how teachers and trainers use it ‘out there’, how they interpret it.

I want to briefly go through some of the ways in which we've tried to communicate the importance of communication skills in training packages. I've already mentioned the first one. The Training package Development Handbook is a more technical document which also provides support for package developers. It has a great deal of technical advice about communication and other generic skills. The Workplace Communication Project has, over the last two or three years produced a number of support materials for training packages which focus on literacy issues. These products have been developed by the Industry Training Advisory Bodies. They vary in their quality. They vary in their usefulness. But nevertheless I think they will be an important resource for teachers and trainers who are delivering training packages in the VET system.

In the training package development process, there is a requirement that when the training package is near to completion it should be evaluated by the state and territory training authorities. We want, if we can, to ensure that the issues that we want to deal with here - communication, language, literacy and numeracy - are properly embedded and easily assessed in the training package before it gets to that stage. We've set up some internal processes to try to ensure that. We also have, finally, a formal review process that is currently looking at about a dozen training packages. These were the packages that were first endorsed some time ago. An important element of that review is to consider the issues we've been talking about today.

All of this means something but it doesn't mean everything. In my opinion, training packages are going to stand or fall, as I said, on the issue of ease of assessment. If the units of competence are very difficult to assess on a widespread scale, then I think we have to say that that particular package, or at least those particular units, have failed. If teachers and trainers do find ways of assessing these competencies in ways that don't require huge amounts of energy and effort, then I think we can say that they are succeeding. But as I said before, the issue is for teachers and trainers to find ways of working as teams to deal with the intermingled technical and communication issues that pervade most of the units of competence in most of the training packages.