- Title
- When employers become training providers: What are some institutional issues?
- Creator
- Smith, Erica; Smith, Andy; Walker, Andrew
- Date
- 2015
- Type
- Text; Conference proceedings
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/161673
- Identifier
- vital:12533
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781925100341
- Abstract
- In Australia, employers are allowed to become accredited training providers and award qualifications to their own workers. This is not unique to Australia – there is provision for this to happen in the UK as well, although it is rarely taken up – but it is not known how widespread the practice is among countries. There are around 250 employers in Australia who have become what is known as ‘Enterprise Registered Training Organisations’ (RTOs, the Australian term for nationally-accredited training providers), and they are drawn from both public and private sectors. They become enterprise RTOs because they want more customisation of training and more control over delivery (Enterprise RTO Association, 2009a); and because they want to improve quality in their production and service processes, and to develop their workforces (Smith & Smith, 2009a). The phenomenon of enterprise RTOs has been little explored, and a major national research project, funded by the Australia Research Council, set out to map the current terrain, examine how enterprise RTOs operate, and to explore questions of training quality and comparability with qualifications delivered through institutional training providers. A partnership was set up with the Enterprise Training Organisation Association and eight enterprise RTOs, in a project with qualitative and quantitative phases including longitudinal case studies in the enterprise RTOs and two surveys of all enterprise RTOs, which gained response rates of one-third and one-quarter respectively. This paper uses findings from the project to explore the institutional infrastructure associated with employer decisions to become enterprise RTOs and maintain that status. Three aspects are examined. Firstly, the paper reports how enterprise RTOs interact with the national vocational education and training (VET) system, in terms of compliance with national quality and reporting requirements. Secondly, it examines the internal infrastructures set up within the companies to operate the enterprise RTO itself and to carry out training that results in a national qualification. Thirdly it explores the impact upon workers (who are also learners) of this way of delivering training. The project found that the processes required to operate as an enterprise RTO were very complex and demanding, and that the enterprise RTO was regularly required to prove its worth to the broader company. In an unanticipated finding, it emerged that during the project’s life, changes in the economic and business environment affected the companies within which enterprise RTOs operated, affecting the operations and structure of the RTOs.
- Publisher
- Institute for Adult Learning
- Relation
- Work and Learning in the Era of Globalisation: Challenges for the 21st Century, 9th International Conference on Researching Work and Learning, School of the Arts, Singapore, 9-11 December. p. 1-14
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
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