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Strategies to overcome women's barriers to work and women's inequality at work have been a focus of Australian public policy for several decades. Yet women in Australia continue to experience gender inequality at work. The focus of this paper is an exploration of the interim results from a new study of Victorian working women titled, Women's Rights at Work (WRAW), exploring the experiences of women at work. The author discusses Victorian working women, human rights in the workplace and policy questions to promote greater gender equality for working women.

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The Victorian Government introduced the Victorian Training Guarantee (VTG) as a key policy reform to reorganize [vocational education and training] VET provision in 2008. Since then, the evolution of a training market has been shaped by the shift from a 'purchaser-provider' arrangement to a fully 'contestable' open market regime. These changes are having far reaching impacts on VET in terms of provision and student experiences. These changes have brought a shift in emphasis with students positioned as consumers and with providers (public and or private) being treated uniformly as market entities.

This paper draws upon submissions to the recent (2011) Essential Services Commission, VET Fee and Funding Review to consider the impact of market approaches to the Victorian VET sector. Many of the submissions made to the review highlighted the costs of a fully 'contestable training market'. Of the sixty-three submissions to the review, Registered Training Organisations and their representative bodies made thirty-five. In these submissions it was consistently maintained that the VTG represented a significant disadvantage to current and prospective students. Submissions by students poignantly illustrated and provided examples of the nature and character of the unintended inequities in this brave new market context.

This paper argues that consumer protections are urgently needed to ensure more equitable approaches to VET provision. In order to achieve improved consumer protections, the paper will argue that cooperation as a core principle is important. For a training market to imply guarantees and be premised upon a robust assurance of quality education this will only occur when a contestable market is arranged through a principle of cooperation.

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The main purpose of this report is to convey the findings of the [Higher Education and Skills Group] HESG [International Specialised Skills] ISS Institute Fellowship awarded to Peter Hurley. The purpose of the Fellowship was to understand how vocational colleges, such as [Technical and Further Education] TAFEs, can link with both providers in the employment sector and social enterprises to create innovative and effective programs for the unemployed. The United Kingdom, Denmark and Finland were visited and used as case studies. The countries were selected because they have an established program of support for social enterprises and, like Australia, have an advanced vocational and educational training (VET) sector. A range of stakeholders were interviewed including social entrepreneurs, VET teachers, government policy advisors and academics. The Fellowship stakeholder interviews highlighted how other countries face many of the same challenges as Australia. It can be difficult to engage learners and jobseekers who have barriers to employment and thus attention and care is needed to create effective training programs for this cohort.

The research has shown that the most effective programs for the long-term unemployed are those that are small scale, 'bottom up' and reflect work-like practices as closely as possible. There are many different ways to meet these criteria. Every country investigated as part of this Fellowship had a different approach, however, all shared a strong commitment to create programs that benefit disadvantaged groups such as the long-term unemployed. The findings of this report shows that there is considerable scope for VET colleges to expand into new areas to ensure they continue to meet their purpose of providing effective vocational training to traditionally disadvantaged groups.

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The Victorian Government's Back to Work (BTW) combines social and economic objectives. The Fund has invested in innovative approaches to vocational skills development so that work-ready job seekers are well matched to job opportunities. With particular attention to equity outcomes for disadvantaged job seekers, BTW recognises that the personal benefits of vocational training are best realised by developing skills that make direct contributions to improved productivity in contemporary workplaces.

These case studies demonstrate how Victoria's TAFE institutes and dual sector universities deploy their expertise to respond to students' aspirations, industry skill needs, community expectations and government policy goals. The case studies are: Industry needs driving training program design - Back to Work at Box Hill Institute; Energising networks and valuing the evidence - Back to Work at Holmesglen and Chisholm Institute; Paddock to Plate - Paddock to Plate Back to Work at Federation Training; Familiarising participants with IT work and workplaces - Back to Work at Victoria Polytechnic; There is no single pathway to work - Back to Work at Wodonga TAFE.

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The distinction between [vocational education and training] VET and higher education in Australia is blurring. The purpose of this paper is to examine - through the conduct of a case study of engineering qualifications (AQF6) delivered in Victoria - how education and training providers and students are likely to respond to different fees and funding arrangements under the student entitlement model.

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The On Track project was initiated in Victoria in 2003 and seeks to: offer a consistent and comprehensive approach to monitoring the transitions of school leavers; report the information to schools, TAFE institutions and other education providers, organisations concerned with assisting young people, policymakers, parents and students; provide detailed analyses of the transitions experienced by different groups of leavers; enable education providers to use the findings to monitor and improve their programs; and provide a referral service for school leavers who appear to be experiencing difficulties in the transition process. The latest survey was conducted in April-May 2012 by the Social Research Centre (SRC) in collaboration with the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). This report is based on data from telephone surveys of 33,901 Year 12 or equivalent completers and 3552 early leavers from the 2011 school year. It focuses on analyses at the state and regional levels. Year 12 or equivalent completers are defined as those who completed a Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE), International Baccalaureate (IB) or Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL, Senior or Intermediate). The sample includes those who completed such qualifications in schools (98.2 per cent), or in TAFE institutions or adult and community education providers (1.8 per cent). For On Track, early school leavers are defined as those students who had registered their details with the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) by enrolling in a VCE or VCAL unit, and who left school during 2011 before completing one of the above qualifications. In general, early leavers had been in Year 10, 11 or 12 when they left school. As such, the sample does not represent all early leavers from Victorian schools.

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'Bridging the employment gap in Bendigo' is one of a number of research reports produced by Learn Local practitioners as a result of a project conducted by [Adult Multicultural Education Services] AMES and [Adult, Community and Further Education Board] ACFE, titled 'Responding to CALD learners: cultural diversity in action'. In his research [the author] takes great care in responding to the complexities surrounding cultural diversity.

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This document presents a case study of the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne's Parkville campus. The library instituted a new user-focused service delivery model and renovations of the building were undertaken. At the same time, attention was given to the professional development needs of the staff. Skills gaps were identified and suitable vocational training was sourced to realign the staff skills with the new service model. Show less

In this article, [the authors] discuss a university-community partnership that had broad goals to promote social, economic, educational and cultural links between the university and people living, working or studying in Carlton, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, with particular emphasis on engaging with disadvantaged and marginalised communities who had limited contact with the university. This population could potentially benefit from having access to the educational, research, employment and infrastructure opportunities available at the university. Known as the Carlton Tripartite Partnership, it involved the University of Melbourne, the City of Melbourne and the Carlton Local Agencies Network (CLAN), an affiliation of local community-based organisations.

At the time of writing, the partnership is faltering, after a period of encouraging consolidation. Key objectives of the partnership were strongly aligned with the university's core activities (research and teaching), but also included aims that appealed to its civic obligations. In particular, this involved creating local employment opportunities and facilitating access to university infrastructure. These diverse objectives reflected incongruent, but not incompatible, aims for the partnership and some proved difficult to achieve. While the partnership reflected the potential of inter-sectoral collaborations and the value of making the university's diverse resources available to impoverished communities, it encountered notable limitations. Insights from partnership activities are important to consider because they suggest the ways in which the value of universities as civic institutions that generate public benefits is being eroded through the influence of neoliberal policies.

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The evaluation of the Centre for Work and Learning Yarra, a demonstration project to test innovative place-based approaches to promote work and learning opportunities for disadvantaged jobseekers, found that successful elements included client personal support matched to skills development and job opportunities, while challenges included labour market barriers and governance and contractual requirements. The findings point to weaknesses in current employment assistance and to potential reforms for more effective pathways to work.

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