Skill Shortages

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:18): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills a question about skill shortages.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.S. LEE: The federal government released the Skill Shortage List for South Australia earlier this month. This document gave an overview of all the occupations that are experiencing large numbers of skill shortages in metropolitan Adelaide and regional South Australia. A number of these jobs are within the health, construction and telecommunication fields and many of these fields are considered to be statewide shortages. For instance, in the occupation of fitter, the findings reported that:

Despite attracting large amounts of qualified applicants, most do not possess the specific skills that employers require or are not familiar with the particular types of machinery, specialised diagnostic and testing equipment used.

It was further reported in the Adelaide University survey that thousands of jobs are on offer in Adelaide's northern suburbs but employers cannot find suitably skilled workers and are constantly having to retrain their employees. My questions are:

1. What measures and strategies has the minister put in place to ensure that the courses offered through WorkReady are meeting the specific skills shortages employers are experiencing?

2. What evaluation process has the minister put in place to monitor the specific skills shortages required by industries in South Australia?

3. What action plans will the minister introduce to ensure training is appropriate to address the problems of skills shortages within the subsidised courses offered by WorkReady?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills, Minister for Science and Information Economy, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (15:20): I thank the honourable member for her most important question. There are a number of things that we have been doing in this place to assist in ensuring that we meet labour force and the needs, and I just can't put my hand on the particular report at the moment, but we've been conducting a series of reviews of particular course outcomes and I think we've done about four or five of those reviews now.

A survey of students, and also employers, was carried out to determine the level of satisfaction that students have, but also the level of the adequacy of the fit of the qualification to industry needs. For instance, it asks the questions around: did employees who completed that particular qualification have the appropriate skill sets and competencies for that particular job? As I said, there are quite detailed reports on a number of particular qualifications and we are slowly working through a whole series of them, and I can't put my hand on that particular report here with me today, but I'm happy to provide the details of the outcomes of those studies.

Overall, generally the outcome of these surveys and that analysis has been fairly positive. It has found deficits in some areas, however, in terms of inadequate competency skill sets and we have worked with giving feedback to RTOs from industry to help improve the content of the particular qualification. So, there is that level that we have been working on and, of course, TASC, our Training and Skills Commission, assists in the spaces well. It engages with industry and RTO providers and also businesses that employ graduates from the VET sector.

Independent validation assessment data—that's what I've been trying to get my head around. Thank you for that. We've done them in the area of aged care, the Certificate III in Aged Care, and, of course, a lot of students go through that particular qualification. There is the Certificate III in Children's Services, a Diploma of Children's Services, and also the Certificate III in Disability—and we are continuing to do those.

As I said, generally, the data is pretty good, but it has found some areas that we have used to help produce improvements in those particular qualifications. As I said, TASC also assists in this space in ensuring that we have a good alignment with training outcomes and industry needs.