Qualifications Frameworks in Australia

Australian education and training has been shaped by federalism and the nation's history as a collection of city-formed states. Institutional and sectoral separation and autonomy have been powerful themes. The Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) is a weak model for achieving the objective of seamlessness in education and training pathways. Yet it has a rigid and semi-regulatory role within the Vocational Education and Training (VET) awards and quality assurance systems. The limits of the framework are expressed on the one hand by the autonomy of the sectors, and on the other by recent regional level developments designed to achieve greater qualifications coverage and pathways linkages. The AQF does have a future role within the Australian qualifications system. However, it needs to be reoriented to achieve more structured and active relationships with the regional and local developments, and to provide a framework for these developments to achieve national consistency and coherence in qualifications.