Bridging the Divide

As sectors of the TCF&LÊ training institutions utilise the updated TCF training package, Samantha Docherty asks what industry can do to help boost education.

Endorsed in December 2007, the new LMT07 TCF training package has taken some four years to complete.Whilst it better represents the profile of job roles within the TCF sector as it is today, many of the industries teachers, trainers and assessors feel there is still room for improvement. How quickly and how extensively industry has already engaged with training packages is not well publicized or even understood.

Introduced as a concept in 1996, the first training packages were endorsed in 1997. Since that time, packages have been progressively developed with national qualifications and units of competency now covering in excess of 85 per cent of the Australian workforce.

Working on a simple yet fundamentally different premise to accredited courses, training packages do not prescribe how an individual should be trained (despite the name!). Rather, they specify the skills and knowledge an experienced person needs to perform effectively in the workplace their competency.

Industry establishes these units of competency whilst teachers and trainers develop learning strategies depending on learners' needs, abilities and circumstances.

Units of competency are grouped or 'packaged' into qualifications and supported by a third component, assessment guidelines, which spell out how a person is to be assessed against the competencies. These three components are endorsed by the National Quality

Council, an overarching body representative of industry, government and training providers whose responsibility it is to oversee the quality of nationally recognised training delivery and its outcomes.

Released in two phases due to lack of funding and the arduous four year process of approval by unions, government and industry skills sectors in each state, the TCF training package caters to 15 different sectors within the textiles industries.

Utilising the first phase which was implemented this year, RMIT's fashion design department teaches the Diploma of Applied Fashion Design and Technology.

A better structure than the previous training package, according to RMIT's programs manager of fashion, Tina Guglielmino, it carries 17 volumes for the fashion sector.

"In the original training package there were no fibres and fabrics or work on environment and new sectors in the industry. There is more IT, as a lot of [processes] in the fashion industry [are] done through electronic communication. These new additions make it more flexible and up-to-date." But it's not all smooth sailing for TCF&L training.

Lucky enough to implement the package in the fashion design department this year, Guglielmino points out the delay in endorsing the second section has affected other streams such as RMIT's textiles and merchandising which are still working from the outdated program.

"Because it takes so long to develop the package, by the time its ready there may be more developments in the industry it doesn't meet."

Provision needs to be made for any new inclusions as is dictated by the changing market place, according to Jo Kellock, executive director of the Council of Textile and Fashion Industries of Australia Limited.

"Additional units of competency and new qualifications reflecting the changing nature of job roles will impact significantly on training provision across the various sectors. Attention needs to be paid to the support of existing training programs with new training materials and trainers with the required level of technical and educational expertise."

Adding that it makes sense to have diversity in training, Kellock says high level training needs to be implemented.
"We need multi skilled workers but not at the expense of mastery being lost. There seems to be a broad approach with all colleges and training institutions offering similar programs. To cater to diversity we need them to start specializing. In one pattern-making course in Instituto Carlo Secoli, Milan students underwent 780 hours of training per annum compared to approx 150 hours per annum offered here. I would like to see ground regained in our industry.

There has been a restructuring over the past 10 years and we need to retrain to accompany this structure. We need a dynamic system with flexible training packages that cater to workplace arrangements with relevant and high tech learning resources."

Seeing a steady decline in employment over the last decade, the TCF industry is expected to lose around 6,100 jobs in the next four years according to MSA's snapshot of the light manufacturing sector (published September 13, 2007).
Noting that to attract the right staff the image of the industry needs to change; Wendy Armstrong, discipline leader of fashion at Queensland University of Technology, says young people need to feel there is a future pathway in the industry for them.

"They need to feel that they are part of the overall design team regardless of how small an input they may have. Simply renaming the term machinist to say assistant design technician (after all a good machinist can offer advise on the making of a garment to improve production) would in fact make the job sound more appealing."

Remarking that training organisations provide a good broad base of skills, Armstrong feels it [needs] to be the responsibility of industry to provide further training for the particular set of skills they require.
"With so many specialised areas in the TCF industry no training organisation can be expected to meet the needs of individual companies."

Scheduled to address the TCF Community of Practice Forum at Kangan Batman TAFE on the future vision for advanced skills in training at the time of press, Kellock feels collaborative networks in assisting the TCF&L industry to work together are important.

"Without this collaboration innovation in training delivery that is current in its content and complex in technical knowledge will not be possible. Transfer of information from industry to education and vice versa needs to be facilitated.ÊNew frameworks, such as the e-learning framework (delivering learning resources on iPods, mobile phones, etcÊas audio visual files and web 2.0 applications), are ideally placed to address this transfer in a cost effective and convenient way. [Additionally] concepts such as the Textile and Design Specialist Centre at RMIT are a platform on which this dynamic exchange could occur, bringing closer together industry and education."

Teaching students a number of skills, Guglielmino says the training package certainly covers a lot of areas but you can't expect graduates to rock up on their first day and understand how industry works.

"A student can only realistically work face to face [with us] for 20 to 25 hours a week and the training package cover about 20 hours [of that]. You can't fit more delivery time into a week so we include 90 hours of work placement and many students have part-time jobs, which goes part of the way of becoming fully aware of work practices. Most of the graduates we have had have been in education all their lives."

Commenting that in some areas RMIT trainers teach to a certain standard and above when they find the industry requires it; Guglielmino feels some training programs don't include those high level skills that the industry demands.
"[However] the industry is being covered reasonably well with the training package as it gives us a good skeleton to work with for the industry. If employers know a certain standard has been achieved they are happy. It's a good realistic measure and the only one we can use when training for industry."

By Samantha Docherty