It has been announced that the Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET) is to hold a roundtable summit designed for training and education leaders to address the most important issues facing the sector.

The announcement was made at the end of the ACPET National Conference, which is the largest meeting of private education and training experts in Australia. ACPET’s CEO Rod Camm described the conference as a “Call to arms for the tertiary sector.”

“It’s time for the leaders in our industry to come together and ask hard questions,” he said.

In a press statement, Mr Camm spoke of how it was time that industry leaders, regulators and the Australian government formed a more productive partnership in order to tackle the biggest challenges in the VET industry.

Rod Camm said the partnership was required to enable the sector to seize the “opportunity on its doorstep,” stating:  

“On the one hand, the opportunities for innovative, high quality education and training providers in Australia couldn’t be any bigger as our domestic economy transitions from old industries to new and the expanding Asian middle class ushers in a golden age for Australian services exports.”

“On the other hand, parts of our sector are in disarray as a perfect storm of quality problems, regulatory failing, funding declines and policy confusion threatens to snatch these opportunities from the sector’s and the nation’s grasp,” the ACPET CEO continued.

Mr Camm asked a series of questions about what more governments and regulators should be doing to manage more contestable training markets, to rid the sector of the “scourge of unethical training providers” and to ultimately improve the student experience.  

The press release also put forward the question of what more should be done to prepare the VET sector for the huge and disruptive shift towards a collaborate digital economy and to ensure that the education and training sector isn’t left behind.  

The roundtable summit aims to develop industry cooperation and partnership to ultimately help build a stronger VET sector in Australia.

The APCET conference is part of a nationwide effort to reform the VET sector by weeding out unethical practices and to ultimately boost the status of Australia’s vocational training.