Friday, 6 March 2009 - The Australian Computer Society (ACS) today welcomed the Federal Education Minister, Julia Gillard’s initial response to Bradley’s Report on Australia’s higher education system. The ACS renewed its call for Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to be recognised as a core discipline of both the University and VET systems, ensuring students are adequately equipped to compete with their international peers in the global workplace.

ACS Chairman, Kumar Parakala said: the changes proposed by Minister Gillard will provide the educational skills sets to help knowledge and innovation become a key future export for our country.

“Through the creation of greater education prospects, training and teaching facilities the Government has created a platform which clearly ties in with maintaining world educational standards,” said Mr Parakala. “We also need to make sure we stay in step with Governments all around the world, by recognising technology and technology skills as a key to this country’s future innovation and prosperity.”

Mr Parkala said Australia can no longer afford to view ICT as an isolated educational discipline. “Overseas, ICT is front and centre of many educational curriculum’s including in China and India where they have harnessed this area as the foundation for their rapidly growing economies. The pervasive nature of technology and its ability to rapidly re-shape the landscape of all key industries means a clearly articulated education system for ICT is well overdue. We look forward to further dialogue in this area with the Government and the Education sector, as changes resulting from the Bradley Review are introduced.”

ACS CEO Kim Denham added, “We must also remember that ICT features in the day to day roles of most professionals. A strong knowledge of ICT is now paramount for many professionals such as medical practitioners of all disciplines, pharmacists and engineers. ICT literacy will become increasingly important with the development of technology and its role in the work force.”

Mr Parakala said the ACS is pleased to see some of the preliminary responses to the Review align with calls the ACS made as part of its submission, which placed particular emphasis on developing an ICT curriculum continuum, and better articulation between the Vocational Education Training sector and Tertiary education.

Key recommendations made by the ACS to the Review include:

• Greater collaboration between industry, Government and the education sector to develop relevant skills sets needed for the future as well as creating new pathways for ICT tertiary education that will produce highly qualified professionals.
• Develop a healthy mixture of entry pathways for recruiting academic staff to ensure strong industry as well as academic based experience is provided to students. Particularly with the proposed uncapped student enrolment system– quality academic staff will be in high demand.
• Creating new vocational entry pathways for ICT - including traineeship, cadetships and apprentice programs.
• To ensure we provide the best ICT educational pathways - bridging the gap between the VET and university sectors
• ICT curriculum to involve a work experience component as part of their degree.
• Industry and government should develop rolling 3 to 5 year skills forecasting plans as part of their annual reporting processes. This information would be invaluable for governments, industry and higher education providers to ensure we are training people with the right skill sets.