In a time of acute skills demand Australia needs highly skilled and educated workers with a commitment to lifelong learning and an ability to adapt to the future demands of technology, industry and the economy.

If our goal is to have the best trained and best qualified workforce in the world, then clearly we must do more in the skills and training area.

The challenge therefore is two-fold: Australia needs to lift the number of students who complete senior secondary school, and to increase the number of people with vocational and skilled trade qualifications.

To increase productivity for the nation and to improve the likelihood of maintaining meaningful, secure employment for individuals, Australia needs to ensure our skilled workers are highly educated with strong literacy and numeracy skills.

For too long, skills and training have been seen as an alternative to education.

Broad economic and social trends are changing the structure of the economy, the size and structure of our work force, the skills needed by workers, and what is required of our education and training system.

If we are to address the economic challenge of an increasing demand for skills we must widen the range of opportunities available to students in our secondary school system.

Demand for workers with vocational education and training and trade skills is rising. According to the Howard Government’s own statistics, Australia will need 240,000 more skilled workers by 2016.

It is estimated that of the young Australians aged 18 to 24 who have not completed Year 12, nearly 120,000 are not engaged in the labour force in any meaningful way. If this group of young people were skilled and engaged in the labour force, this alone would meet almost half the estimated skills needs for the next five years.

We must lift participation in, and completion of, the senior years of schooling by improving the quality of education and vocational training within these years. It is also vital that we address young people’s transition to vocational education and from vocational education and training to university study. Our goal must be to prepare young Australians better for post secondary school education.

We must also confront the reality that for a significant number of young students, remaining at school and in training is a significant disincentive when rates of pay for unskilled or semi-skilled labour are high.

A skilled workforce is essential for our long-term prosperous future, so we need to make vocational qualifications more attractive to all Australians, beginning with young people in schools.

Australia’s vocational education and training system has served our nation well.

However, the changing skills sets required and the changing demand for those skills by employers and the nation means that more needs to be done to ensure our vocational education and training system meets the needs of those young people in a vocational or skilled occupation, or looking for a career in one.