Helping Mining Workers Upskill and Reskill

The mining sector will benefit from improved qualifications to help address existing and future workforce challenges.

A qualification design trial is now underway as part of the Morrison Government’s Skills Organisations Pilots, which are helping the nation’s training system respond to industry needs.

Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business, Senator the Hon Michaelia Cash, said the Morrison Government is committed to delivering faster and improved training for the Australian mining sector.

“We want to better meet the current and future training needs of employers and employees, which is especially important now to support our COVID-19 economic recovery,” Minister Cash said.

“That’s why this trial is so important, because it will help simplify and streamline qualifications to provide the mining sector with the skills it needs to flourish.”

The first qualification trial is being run by the Mining Skills Organisation Pilot, one of three industry-led organisations funded by the Morrison Government to test and trial ways to improve the VET system.

The trial will test the following concepts:

  • Qualifications based on appropriately grouped occupation and skills clusters to enable broader vocational outcomes, improve individual mobility and labour market resilience, and increase the pool of available talent for employers
  • Simplified training products that reduce the level of prescriptive conditions in current qualifications and make better use of industry and educational expertise
  • Use of short form training products with improved pathways advice to support students to rapidly upskill or reskill to pursue new career opportunities.

Minister Cash said the trial presents a significant opportunity to design and test new evidence-based approaches to improving the national VET training system.

“Technology is changing traditional occupations and demanding new skills. The Mining Skills Organisation Pilot will help develop and test a new apprenticeship for mobile plant diesel mechanics that incorporates critical skills that cross traditional occupations,” Minister Cash said.

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