$3000 hospitality skills training vouchers
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October 18, 2006Business Mums Network launches magazine
October 20, 2006Federal Government program to ease hospitality industry skills crisis
Hospitality Magazine reports that the restaurant and catering industry is welcoming the Federal Government’s new $837m program. Up to 30,000 workers a year will be eligible for skills training.
As part of the scheme the Government says it will hand out skills vouchers worth $407m over five years to fund vocational and other training for workers over 25 who do not have Year 12 certificates.
Prime Minister John Howard says people over 25, who did not complete Year 12, will be able to use the $3,000 vouchers to pay for vocational courses in TAFEs, federal colleges and private institutions.
The Government will establish a hotline for next month for people to apply for the vouchers with priority given to the unemployed, unskilled workers and those on other forms of income support.
Cautious welcome from rural training bodies
The chairman of the Rural Training Council of Australia, Peter Griffin, says the plan would go some way towards easing rural skills shortages.
“It’s a very positive response. The skills shortage is a complex issue through rural and regional Australia,” he said.
“There’s no one fix because as well as a skills shortage there’s a people shortage, so it is very important that we focus not only on entry level.”
How will this affect you or your business?
3 Comments
Federal Government’s new $837m program “Skills for the future” $3,000 Grant.
Apart from the generous grant I cannot see a positive outcome to this programme being successful. There are limitations with applying for this grant. One is you have to be over the age of 25, two you can either do year 12 VCE or a Vocational qualification (Certificate II Only) in mostly the areas where there is a shortage of qualified workers which is mostly in the trade sector, three you can only do the course at an institute which is registered with the Skills for the future programme.>>more>>
From my experience a Certificate II is worth nothing to an employer. This grant is more than enough to cover a Certificate III, Diploma or any Degree, so one has to ask – why is there a limitation ? Is it to show that we have a caring government or is it for some other reason. Why can’t Australians be given the opportunity to do better or seek a higher qualification with these types of grants instead of being limited to what one can do with it. This would make jobseekers and the like more employable – its just a waste of money really because really its not helping Australians to do better, we really are behind the rest of the world.
Thank you for this comment. We’ll follow it up. Do you think it could be simply ignorance of actual workplace practices, which you obviously know about, that places the limitation?
its all about giving the corporate charites our tax$$ and make the gov’t. look good in theyes of the ppl ,