The Local Government Training Package
The Local Government industry in Australia has developed the Local Government Training Package over a number of years. The Training Package has been designed to reflect the work functions that people actually perform in Local Councils. It is intensely practical and covers the skills used in a wide range of occupations from Local Government Administration, the Planning and Management of the Physical Environment to ChildCare and Horticulture.
A National Breakthrough
The Training Package provides a comprehensive vocational training tool for Councils and Shires across the nation. It is the first time that the skills and knowledge for effective operation in the industry have been identified.
The Local Government Training Package represents a significant investment by and in the industry. It provides:
- A full range of nationally recognised and transportable qualifications for employees from entry level to middle management across all areas of the workforce.
- An assessment strategy, which recognises skills, achieved in the workplace not just through formal training. This offers a great opportunity for people who have been working in the industry but who do not have a qualification. Their skills can be recognised and rewarded and any future training can count towards a national credential.
- Training programs which can be used to support new apprenticeships and traineeships within the industry. This means that new entrants to Local Government can receive high quality and relevant training and employers can participate in the incentives offered by Government to organisations that employ and train new workers.
- A training specification which can be used by Councils when negotiating the planning and delivery of training with training providers.
How does the Training Package work?
Training Packages are undeniably large and quite complex. This is because they describe a wide range of work in the form of competency standards, and also contain information about qualifications and the assessment guidelines to be used.
The good news is that the Training Package is available in a very user-friendly CD ROM format as well as print. There are also people who can help you – ALGT itself and the State ITABs, New Apprenticeship Centres and Registered Training Organisations. Training Packages are now widely used in a large number of industries across the nation. As a result, the purpose, format and use of Training Packages is increasingly understood by a range of professionals. So, you are not on your own.
The Local Government Training Package comprises 12 qualifications ranging from Certificate I to Advanced Diploma under the following different streams.
- Governance and Administration
- Planning and Environmental Management
- Environmental Health and Regulation
- Operational Works (June 2001)
Because people in Local Government also work in a range of different functional areas the Training Package facilitates the use of other industries’ competency standards, including Community Services, Administration, Horticulture, Libraries and Museums and Civil Construction.
Design High Quality Skill Development Solutions
The Training Package provides a good starting point when working with training providers to establish a training strategy.
The Training Package provides a detailed specification of training outcomes but still allows contextualisation and tailoring to your local needs. You can negotiate with the training provider to tailor the product, using the Range of Variables and the Evidence Guide.
You can also work with training providers to ensure that the training and assessment strategies, which deliver the competencies, are also tailored to meet your specific needs. So you can get the best of both worlds – transportable, recognised, national training while ensuring flexibility so that local needs are met.
The competencies contained within the Training Package can form the basis of your performance management system, which links the description of the work (position descriptions) that is carried out to the performance review process. Used in conjunction with software, such as Job Right for Local Government, the training package assists with training or skill recognition which continues to develop the workforce and ensures any identified skill ‘gaps’ are filled.
Preparing Job Descriptions or Specifications
The packaging of functions and occupations contained in the Training Package qualifications provides a benchmark you can use when analysing and designing jobs.
It is a good starting point for your own job design ‘packaging’. You can use the Training Package to check your functional analysis or task requirements. The Training Package has been developed over time with the input of a wide range of Local Government practitioners providing quick, simple, way of tapping into the collected wisdom of many people.
When you move from the job design stage to the more detailed area of preparing job descriptions you can, once again, look to the Training Package to select the appropriate competencies to underpin the job descriptions.
The competency standards do more than describe functions or tasks. Because they also contain performance criteria, the competency standards describe the results required from the performance of various functions or tasks and the behaviours and results expected.
The Training Package has been developed for Local Government and reflects a significant public investment.
Looking for creative ways to utilise the Package will help contain your costs and enable you to tap into the work of colleagues across the nation.
Has my Council ordered the national Local Government Training Package?
If not contact Kate Vella, telephone (03) 9349 3911 or email info@algt.com.au
