Edalex, the EdTech company powering your single source of truth for skills and learning data, and The Bean Centre, the company on a mission to create a future that works, announce the release of a discussion paper that presents the key themes and discussion points from skills leaders and practitioners and provides recommendations to four stakeholder groups. The paper summarises the findings from a series of Skills Meet-ups that enabled participants to build cross-sector connections, hear from policymakers and explore practical avenues to closing the skills gap in Australia.
“Mid year 2022, we recognised that there was a need to connect people working on disparate and at times isolated skills programs and projects. There was no existing forum where they could meet, share their experiences and insights, discuss the impact of state and national skills policies and explore practical steps to address the current and future skills gap. It was a conversation that needed to be had,” said Dan McFadyen, Managing Director of Edalex. In collaboration with The Bean Centre, two Skills Meet-Ups were held, in July and November of 2022. The participants came from a cross-section of those advancing the change agenda around skills and from organisations innovating at a grassroots level with new models of skills data, taxonomies, standards and alignments. “Four primary stakeholders were represented – government; industry / employers; educators and learners,” McFadyen continued, “and we found that this resulted in more rounded discussions and holistic solutions that aligned across sectors and at macro and micro levels.”
Professor Martin Bean CBE, Founder and CEO of The Bean Centre stated: “It is our hope that this discussion paper will contribute to a national strategy to create real measurable change in the way we recognise and validate skills. In the way we train, re-skill and upskill our workforce, and in the way we empower all individuals to have equitable access to lifelong learning”. Bean continued “It’s clear that now is the time to act if we are to ensure we have the right skills for our communities to flourish in the future. This discussion paper sets out some clear recommendations for reform and I look forward to the conversations they will stimulate”.
The discussion paper outlines several challenges and suggests recommendations for each stakeholder group in defining the roadmap for the emerging skills ecosystem in Australia. The challenges include:
- The need for large-scale restructuring across formal education
- The need for immediate action to provide equitable access to education
- The need for industry and education to work together more closely
- The need for funding reform and co-development – the keys to a better-skilled, better-trained workforce
- The need to address skills shortages and migration system reform
- The need for long-term planning and frameworks to sustain change and growth of the skills ecosystem
- The need for open linked data to underpin the ecosystem
Key findings indicate that national leadership and coordination is urgently needed, setting standards around taxonomies and open data are the highest priority, new government policies and funding models will have big impacts, and greater communication, collaboration, and co-design are key to success.
“There is no question of whether or not evolution will happen – it’s already begun. While it was recognised that there are many disruptive and worthwhile projects currently working to effect change – particularly in the area of training, reskilling, and up-skilling – these efforts need to be identified, recorded and the results amplified,” McFadyen noted. “The need for immediate action and coordination was observed repeatedly and across both meetings. By presenting the data, feedback, and challenges identified by the Skills Meet-Up participants in this discussion paper, we hope to foster not only continuing discussion around the evolution of the skills ecosystem but inspire action also.”
Download Discussion Paper
Media Contact
Kristine Chompff
Marketing Manager for Edalex
+61 409 598 408
kristine.chompff@edalex.com
About The Bean Centre
The Bean Centre was founded in 2021 by Professor Martin Bean CBE with a single mission: To partner with visionary education experts, breakthrough technology companies and future thinking education providers to create a future that works. By drawing on his deep knowledge of the intersection of technology and education, Martin provides strategic advice to educational organisations of all types – private, public and community.
Learn more – thebeancentre.com
About Edalex
Powering your single source of truth for skills and learning data
Edalex is an EdTech company powering your single source of truth for skills and learning data. Founded in 2016, Edalex develops technology solutions that extract hidden value from educational data to make it accessible and more meaningful. Edalex brings together the team behind the CODiE award-winning openEQUELLA open source platform that centrally houses teaching and learning, research, media and library content.
In 2019, Edalex launched Credentialate, the world’s first Credential Evidence Platform, that helps discover and share evidence of workplace skills. Credentialate creates order from chaotic data, provides meaningful insight through framework alignment and equips each learner with unique, rich, industry-aligned evidence of their skills and competencies. Credentialate has continued to evolve at an accelerated pace, informed in partnership with educators and industry leaders from around the world.
openRSD was released by Edalex in 2022 to help create, store and share rich skill descriptors (RSDs) and RSD collections. openRSD uses Edalex’s open source technology stack to create locally- and globally-relevant libraries of RSDs that are open to all contributors and consumers. RSDs are the building blocks of a skills-driven labour market. They structure skills data, add context around a particular skill and are both human and machine readable. RSDs bring equity to the learner and the skills ecosystem and provide an even playing field for skills recognition.
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