“China’s been our major market and they are much more sophisticated now in what they look for and what they expect”

The PIE: It sounds like China is one of your main markets. Where else?

PH: It’s a changing focus for us. As I said China’s become much more sophisticated and we’ve had to change our business models there but definitely it’s still a very important market for us. Their focus is on building up a skilled labour force to raise the standard of living in Chinese cities particularly in the second and third tier ones. Indonesia is just emerging but I think it will be quite significant as they work on building a skilled labour force that can take advantage of their massive oil and gas reserves. India is one that’s got extraordinary targets. They want to train 500 million by 2020 in vocational training. The numbers are just mind-boggling.

The PIE: What vocations in particular are in demand?

PH: It depends on the area but there’s no question that countries around the world are looking to develop their natural resources whether it be oil and gas in the Indonesian region, coal up in Mangolia or all of the above in Africa. And the resources industry creates a whole range of downstream industries for example carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers electricians to establish the infrastructure before you even start digging into the ground. You need tourism and hospitality staff to cope with the fly in and fly out of people and the various other workers that will come into a particular region.  You’ll need increased health and childcare workers.

“There’s no question that countries around the world are looking to develop their natural resources”

The PIE: Where do you see future opportunities for TAFE internationally?

PH: We’ve just been nominated by UNESCO as one of the coordinating centres for its vocational arm the UNEVOC network. It celebrates 20 years in November and they’ve got close to 300 centres around the world mostly located in training institutions. They’re trying to basically refresh and revitalise that network so they have nominated institutions in 13 different regions around the world to coordinate those centres to try to put back an “umph” into it. We’re also working with the Republic of Korea to establish a network of TVET providers in the East-Asia region with a new grouping called the East Asia Summit which is 18 countries including the US. We’ve received some funding to first of all do a scan of existing networks and then bring together representatives from those 18 countries and look at what a sustainable TVET network among them would look like.