Page 24 - IB April 2021

Education Education

international development.” labour mobility as a critical source of Pacific employment and
COVID has changed that, indicates APTC’s new Interim CEO. income. Curtain and Howes write: “The best way to promote
Janelle Chapman says while stage two of the program was demand for APTC graduates is to link them with New Zealand
“very much about the partnerships, coalitions and building and Australian employers. Although the APTC was established
that up… the priority has swung back to the TVET delivery, so in response to Pacific demands for greater access to Australian
there are skills for employment.” labour markets, opportunities for migration by APTC gradu-
“It’s a refocusing on what we do” says Chapman, who was ates have been very limited.”
about to be confirmed in the substantive position of Execu- They suggest some possible pathways to improve labour
tive Director APTC as we prepared to go to print. “Because of mobility, in particular the Temporary Skills Shortage visa
COVID, DFAT has said it needs to swing back to skills for em- (TSS). Only a tiny fraction of these visas has gone to Pacific
ployment for now. It’s not to say we’re not still talking about Islanders despite the skills of APTC graduates being a good fit
Pacific-led long term. That’s still on the table and always will they say. 66% of TSS migrants are hired within Australia, and
be, but the focus needs to be on getting people jobs at the when employers go offshore to recruit, they go to bigger, and
moment.” tried and tested markets such as the Philippines. Curtain and
The COVID response saw APTC offer micro-credentials in Howes suggest employers be subsidised to visit the APTC, see
digital literacy to tourism workers who had lost their jobs in the skill level and recruit from the student cohorts. They say
digital literacy. APTC also worked with partners in Vanuatu, visa applicants could be assisted to “undertake the technical
including Wan Smolbag Theatre, to deliver a work-ready skills assessment interviews they need to obtain a visa. APTC could
program on radio. This project is to be replicated in other also subsidise visa expenses, prepare graduates for the lan-
Pacific Island countries. APTC also ran training on COVID-safe guage test as required, and help with individual visa submis-
business guidelines, plus online training on business resilience sions by employees.”
skills and microenterprise training. Some of this is not without precedent. In recent years,
Fantasha Lockington is the CEO of the Fiji Hotel and Tourism APTC aged care graduates have gone to work in Australia after
Association and an APTC board member. She says the training employers visited the Pacific and conducted interviews with
offered to tourism workers post-COVID was developed in close candidates at APTC’s office.
consultation with the industry and was “just awesome”. Janelle Chapman says APTC will run a new tracer survey
“One of the initial ones was how to use the Internet of next year, which will provide more clarity on employment
Things (IoT); how do we fill forms online, how do we promote trends, but as 2020 was extraordinary, it is hard to draw any
ourselves, how do we join groups, how do we find out what long—term conclusions. “The reality is, we didn’t get the
else is going on.” Lockington says financial literacy training employment outcomes we hoped to get, but then I don’t think
was another useful offering in the early days of the pandemic. anyone did through the COVID,” she says.
Chapman says while the APTC strategic review is not yet
Measuring success public—as DFAT has not done its management response—it
The changes at APTC come amid criticism from some quar- prioritises TVET delivery, Gender Equality, Disability and Social
ters that its graduates are struggling to find work, and that Inclusion (GEDSI) and labour mobility. She says this doesn’t
the Coalition is not meeting its objectives, specifically around mean more Australian trainers will be flown in, but that
labour mobility. “we’re looking at how we can build the capacity of individual
Speaking at a recent Development Policy Institute webinar, national trainers to be able to ensure that we have that lon-
academic and researcher Dr Richard Curtain said APTC is ger term sustainability.”
clearly seen as a success: “graduates are highly thought of by “Labour mobility has become a big focus for DFAT post stra-
employers and Pacific governments, who see the APTC as hav- tegic review, and they want us to look at other alternatives,”
ing played a significant role in lifting the standards of techni- Chapman says.
cal trainers in the Pacific more generally.” “It might be that we [APTC] need someone regionally as
However looking at data relating only to job seekers (i.e. well [on labour mobiity], or we might need someone based in
those who did not have a job to return to after graduation), Queensland or based in New Zealand, or we work with part-
Curtain and fellow analyst Dr Stephen Howes say APTC’s trac- ners in order to ensure that we’ve got the information and
ing surveys (which run six and 12 months after graduation) logistics right.”
show that the proportion of graduates with full-time work at She cites opportunities in aged care, and Australia’s tourism
the time of the survey has fallen from 77% in 2011-13 to 55% sector as one potential source of work opportunities for Pacif-
in 2017-19. They say the proportion of graduates with no paid ic graduates, and says they are taking to (Australian company)
work over the same period had climbed from 9% to 35%, and Australian Internships about this pathway, and possible 9 to 12
that Pacific labour markets cannot “absorb a continuous flow month internships with Australian tourism operators, who are
of post-school technical graduates with the same qualifica- struggling to fill positions now that the number of interna-
tions.” tional students and working holiday makers has dramatically
The Development Policy Institute (which is based at the down. Chapman says the beauty of this scheme is that there
Australian National University) has consistently championed is a robust pastoral care framework around the students, and

24 Islands Business, April 2021