Jobs and Skills Councils (JSCs) have been established to provide industry with a stronger voice to ensure Australia’s vocational education and training (VET) sector delivers better outcomes for learners and employers.
They bring together employers, unions and governments in a tripartite arrangement to find solutions to skills and workforce challenges.
What is a Jobs and Skills Council?
A Jobs and Skills Council (JSC) is a not-for-profit company that is industry-owned and industry-led. They are part of a national network of 10 JSCs that provide leadership to address skills and workforce challenges for their industry. They:
- align effort across industries to improve VET system responsiveness
- build stakeholder confidence
- drive high-quality outcomes for the VET sector, learners and business.
JSCs will identify skills and workforce needs for their sectors, map career pathways across education sectors, develop contemporary VET training products, support collaboration between industry and training providers to improve training and assessment practice, and act as a source of intelligence on issues affecting their industries.
Each JSC works closely with Jobs and Skills Australia, drawing on its workforce analysis and projections to plan for their industry sector and creating a consistent approach to addressing skill gaps.
JSC Functions
JSCs are responsible for the following four core functions:
- Workforce Planning
Workforce Planning is the strategic centrepiece for JSCs and informs the other functions. Workforce planning will underpin intelligence-gathering for strategic priorities and will be a critical focus to guide strategic planning. - Training Product Development
Training product development requires JSCs to develop training products in line with standards set by Skills Ministers to improve the quality, speed to market and responsiveness of training products. - Implementation, Promotion and Monitoring
JSCs will partner with training providers and organisations to align workforce planning objectives and national training products with career advice and ‘on the ground’ training delivery. - Industry Stewardship
JSCs will act as a source of intelligence on workforce issues affecting their industries and provide advice on national training system policies.
To find out more visit: Jobs and Skills Councils – Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, Australian Government (dewr.gov.au)
