Young Person's Roundtable on Skills and Training

The Victorian Skills Authority (VSA) hosted a Young Person's Roundtable on Skills and Training on 22 November 2023.

The Minister for Skills and TAFE Gayle Tierney attended the event with a group of diverse young Victorians aged 16 to 24 to learn about their experiences with post-secondary education, and to ensure that the education and training system is meeting their needs and supporting them to achieve their goals.

It was a fantastic opportunity for prospective, current and recently graduated students to not only share their insights with policy makers but also build confidence and gain experience in representing their views. Roundtable participants were a passionate and engaged group of young people and shared their thoughts with the VSA about:

• the changing world and their aspirations for the future
• their personal values and how they make decisions about post-secondary education
• their experiences of the skills and training system
• opportunities for student voices to be heard and acted upon.

The young people we spoke with wanted to make choices about their future careers based on the values that were important to them. But they also noted the difficulty in balancing personal interests and values, and family and societal expectations when weighing up their options following secondary education.

They emphasised the importance of teachers and other inspirational figures in guiding them towards particular qualifications or career paths. But they also told us that getting unbiased information on career and study options was also a challenge.

Participants also highlighted the importance of having mechanisms (like the roundtable) available to them to ensure they could actively provide input into aspects of the post-secondary education system that mattered to them – including the design and delivery of courses and support services.

Their experiences and insights are a critical first input into work that the VSA is undertaking to implement actions relating to participation and inclusion from the first and second Victorian Skills Plans, and develop an overarching approach to support vocational training and education (VET) sector stakeholders in the capture of and response to, student feedback.