CUA13: Some good, Some bad

MELBOURNE: Monday 28th May 2012

The proposed new entertainment training package (see previous blog) has some interesting components. Thankfully the Certificate IV has an ELECTIVE in soldering, but it is our informed guess no TAFE or college will put this unit into the qualification.

Sadly the Certificate II and Certificate III remain in the province of school based training, with Apply a General Knowledge of Audio remaining a base level unit, with no real incentive for a college or TAFE to do much more than some whiteboard work to pass a student through.

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A final and possibly contentious issue before the NPRG is the potential adoption of Skills Sets. These are clusters of Units which when bundled form a ‘Skill Set’. Example: Stage Management. This is a group of six Diploma and Advanced Diploma units specific to Stage Management.

There are proposed Skill Sets for these jobs:

1. Acting (5 Units, Cert III and IV level)
2. General Stagehand (4 units, Cert 1 and Cert II level)
3. Advanced Production Design (5 units, Diploma and Advanced Diploma level)
4. Production Management (5 units, Diploma and Advanced Diploma level)
5. Stage Management (5 units, Diploma and Advanced Diploma level)

The Skill Sets packaging is because other industries, like forestry or construction or manufacturing, have needed to address chronic skills shortages. The federal government introduced the option to fund specific training for specific skills, so that a TAFE or an RTO (registered training organisation) could obtain funding to supply specific training for a niche where industry was screaming for trained workers.

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UPSIDE: Fast and task specific training.

DOWNSIDE: The regular pathway is to do a Certificate IV or Diploma, get the depth and the core units, and graduate into (hopefully) employment.

ISSUE BEFORE THE INDUSTRY: Do we want this? It means we could potentially have tech’s trained in something specific, faster, and with funding.

OUTCOME: If we want it, do we really want the clusters suggested by the NPRG above? CX would suggest some more effective clusters, like:

• AV Tech
• Sound Tech
• Lighting/Vision Tech

Note we partnered lighting with vision, because in a live event context we think they are joined at the hip.

The NPRG talked about the possibility of an OH&S cluster, as a Skills Set.

What do YOU think?

There is limited time to influence this. Comment below! (CX is represented on the NPRG, which in the previous post, is explained).