$1.6 million funding allocation for WA training pilot
Western Roads Federation (WRF) welcomes a funding allocation for a training pilot to tackle Western Australia’s transport personnel shortage.
Its whole-of-life solution for Western Australia is the recipient of $1.6 million training pilot following an announcement by Senator Michaelia Cash.
“Western Roads Federation, in partnership with WA’s Training Course Experts (TCE), developed a pilot program that will provide young people wanting to enter the workforce with real training and real world job experience in WA’s transport and logistics sector,” WRF CEO Cam Dumesny says in a statement.
“Funding of this program adds yet another stage to Western Roads Federation multi-staged industry training plan … a comprehensive plan that aims that intends to address all stages of a career.”
Last year WA pledged to tackle truck driver training shortcomings
WRF notes the plan recognises and adopts initiatives by the other states, and comprises the following stages:
Stage One – How to Attract People to Industry: Work is being undertaken by WRF to develop a number of actions to attract people to the industry. However we recognise and are supporting the great work done by Natroad with its job portal and the role it plays in industry attraction
Stage Two – Job Entry Pathway: How do we provide a jobs entry pathway into the industry? The $1.6m pilot program that has just been funded is a key part of how we address this stage. Additional elements are being developed to improve industry attraction.
Stage Three – Improving and Developing Skills:
- As people develop in their careers they need access to real training and skills development, not the tick n flick approach that has been all to prevalent over the last decade.
- Starting with a WA industry driver training academy – WRF in conjunction with the WA State Government is on track to establish an industry driver training school by 1 Jul 20, where the focus is on real experience for drivers led by the industry.We have worked with the VTA and NTRTA in developing this.
- We have some really exciting additional training and skills solutions in the pipeline and they will be announced in due course
Stage Four – Developing Business Skills: During careers some people will chose to start their own business, move up in a business or become an owner driver. To help them develop the skills they need, WRF has picked up on the good work of the QTA and their short courses they have been running.
Stage Five – Under Wraps at this Stage: But this will fundamentally change our industry’s professional development.
Stage Six – Recognising Experience: How do we tap into the decades of expertise of our drivers and industry professionals? There needs to be a way that can tap into the knowledge and hard won lessons such that we can feed that knowledge back into the industry training and development.
“WRF as always is happy to collaborate and share information with the other state associations,” it says.
“Hopefully through that process we can progress towards harmonisation of a national approach by the state associations.”
The funding comes via the federal government’s Youth Jobs PaTH employment services initative.