July 2010
On 2 August 2010, Universities Australia held a workshop on AQF, TEQSA and related matters. It was attended by some fifty representatives, mostly Vice-Chancellors and Deputy Vice-Chancellors. This letter outlines the areas on which the workshop participants reached consensus. However, the positions outlined here cannot be taken as truly definitive, pending further discussion and resolution by the full Universities Australia membership at its next plenary meeting on 20 September.
Aligning the AQF with TEQSA
Universities Australia understands that the Ministerial Council for Tertiary Education and Employment (MCTEE) oversights the development of the AQF, which spans the tertiary sector. However, it is evident that the AQF will serve to shape TEQSA's work, presumably as one of the five framework standards, and also that we are in a transition phase, with TEQSA focussing in the first instance on higher education while being intended from 2013 to encompass the full tertiary sector. There is considerable work yet to be done in defining both the initial higher education framework and its integration with the developing approach for VET, and Universities Australia is concerned that the AQF's development work should not move too far ahead of the development of the broader TEQSA frameworks.
To read the full submission, download the PDF below.
