Update on National Training Package

For the past three years AgriFood Skills Australia (AFISC) has been working with industry stakeholders on the merger of the Agriculture, Horticulture and Conservation & Land Management Training Packages, to make one Training Package AHC10.

A ‘Validation Draft’ of the package has been posted on the AFISC website and requires feedback from industry prior to the training package going to the next levels of validation, and potentially out into the VET training system in 2010.

The deadline for feedback is November 23.

Last July (2008), NGIA submitted the ‘final’ document to AFISC, which was a compilation of requests from all the various consultative groups. The qualifications reviewed were Certificate II to the Diploma of Horticulture.

We have reviewed the Validation Draft and compared it to the Industry Feedback document that we submitted last July. The main comments from this side of the fence are as follows:

Cert II Horticulture – Production Nursery / Cert II Horticulture – Retail Nursery

• Industry feedback was that these qualifications needed specialisations (i.e. not General qualification) and mandatory units
• AFISC have deleted any specialised units at the Cert II level (except for Turf) and there are no mandatory units except for one OHS

Cert III Horticulture – Production Nursery / Cert III Horticulture – Retail Nursery

• Industry feedback was that these qualifications needed specialisations (i.e. not General qualification) and identified mandatory units
• AFISC have allowed specialised units at the Cert III level and the mandatory units that industry asked for have been given. Production has 15 units, of which 12 are mandatory units chosen by industry as per July report. Retail has 15 units, of which 10 are mandatory units chosen in July report. However, the Retail qual does not list any budget, sales reports or KPI subjects – so this needs to be investigated further

Cert IV in Horticulture

• Industry asked for specialised quals for Production & Retail at the Cert IV level as well as mandatory units
• These have not been included by AFISC

Diploma of Horticulture

• Industry asked for specialisations in this qualification for Production and Retail with mandatory units, although there was no real agreement by groups as to what the mandatory units should be. The Production and Retail specialisations have been removed by AFISC
• Industry also asked for the qualification to be renamed Diploma of Horticulture (specialisation) Management. This also has not happened

We have asked for feedback from AFISC as to why some identified areas have not been actioned. They have advised that they will reply as soon as possible. When their reply is available, we will forward to all state associations for dissemination. It is possible that the Cert II, IV and Diploma qualifications have not been actioned by AFISC due to the current low number of enrolments in these qualifications - Cert IV particularly.

Any feedback prior to the AFISC response is most welcome. So that we can keep our eye on the process by AFISC, feedback should be forwarded to NGIA for collation rather than using the AFISC website. Contact Fiona Kelly, National Training Manager at NGIA on
(02) 9876 5200 or via email fiona.kelly@ngia.com.au.