We are experiencing a period of profound change. Jobs that have existed for years are being displaced and new occupations are being created at an exponential rate.

The rise of automation, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are threatening the shelf life of skillsets. It’s clear that emerging technologies pose significant implications for learners, organisations and training providers. To succeed in tomorrow’s economy, our workforce must work in sync with ‘thinking machines’.

Economic uncertainty and pandemic-induced lockdowns sped up the adoption of automation and AI. The freefall of our local and global labour markets are leaving many workers concerned about displacement.

As economies begin to open up, many Australians are now asking: What will the future of work look like and how do we prepare for it?

Industry 4.0 is officially here. We are living through a megatrend of technological change. Rapid advances in automation, AI and big data are affecting the quality and quantity of jobs available in our near future. 

As human labour is substituted in favour of automation, the net displacement of workers is predicted to be in the millions. However, experts anticipate the number of jobs lost will be fewer than the number of new jobs created. 

The World Economic Forum predicts 97 million global roles will emerge in newly-formed industries.

New occupations will continue to require both digital and human components. The importance of human interaction will be integral as we move to a digital-first economy.

The highest growth jobs of tomorrow can be segmented into seven key occupational clusters:

From these clusters, the WEF has identified the top 10 roles in demand by 2025: 

Experts calculate 40% of Australia’s jobs will disappear in the next 10 years. At a minimum, 9% of jobs in the current labour market will be fully automated, with more than half of our workforce facing varying degrees of automation.

Globally, 85 million jobs are estimated to be displaced by a shift in the division of labour between humans and machines by 2025. 

Signs of ‘job polarisation’ are beginning to emerge in labour markets around the world. Today’s jobs are being segregated into low-skill/low-income and high-skill/high-income segments. 

VET educators play a crucial role in skilling our workforce in these emerging trends. Education and training providers can pivot to offer qualifications and short courses to train more Australians in industry-specific and cross-cutting skills of the future. 

Research from the Ready, Set, Upskill – Effective Training for the Jobs of Tomorrow report found our technology, media and telecommunications industries are expected to grow by $10 billion over the next five years. This requires more than 156,000 digital technology workers to be trained by 2025. 

The report reveals that three out of four Australians want to undertake training in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. Similarly, four in five Australian business leaders believe adopting new technologies into their workplaces will be crucial to achieving business goals.

“The time to act on workforce development is now… an imperative first step is ensuring Australia’s workforce is equipped with a basic level of digital literacy through effective skills development and training programs,” says John O’Mahony, partner at Deloitte Access Economics.

However, our $10 billion economy growth hinges on improving the digital literacy of our workforce. 

There are several ways training providers can contribute to the digital upskilling and reskilling of Australians. Providers can incorporate digital skills into course delivery to facilitate the smooth transition of workplaces into Industry 4.0. 

Providers can do this through three key strategies:

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated our transition into a technology-driven labour market by years. Emerging roles in big data, robotics and AI will create new opportunities for career transitions for workers willing to invest in lifelong learning.

Candlefox is excited to see how our education and training system will innovate to accommodate changes in the world of work.

For this article, we pulled insights from leading institutions and experts from across the globe including:

• Future Now Series: The Future of Work, Australian Financial Review and KPMG
• The Future of Jobs Report 2020, World Economic Forum
• Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained: Workforce Transitions in a Time of Automation, McKinsey Global Institute
• Jobs of Tomorrow: Mapping Opportunity in the New Economy, World Economic Forum
• Opportunities in Change: Responding to the Future of Work, The McKell Institute
• Ready, Set, Upskill – Effective Training for the Jobs of Tomorrow, RMIT Online and Deloitte Access Economics

With Industry 4.0 well underway, we are seeing a global shift towards mass workforce training.

Industries across the board are upskilling their workers to meet the demands of our digital future. We are witnessing a rapid increase in learning and development as the race to bridge the skills gap – the skills workers hold and the skills required by industry – hastens.

Learning and Development teams and professional bodies, such as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), are preparing to get ahead of the curve by spearheading new programs and qualifications that are responsive to the labour market.

The announcement of CIPD’s new qualifications is a timely addition to the education sector in the UK, workforce upskilling and reskilling predicted to skyrocket. These new qualifications are expected to generate a large influx of individual and corporate memberships and provide more opportunities for CIPD-approved trainers to deliver more workforce training solutions than ever.

Over the past decade, our workforce has been continually evolving. The rising complexity of the business landscape and the digital revolution has severely impacted our world of work.

The rise of automation and new technology caused a skills rift – the skills required by industry far exceeded the skills workers currently held. The global pandemic crisis only heightened this skills gap. 

A report by McKinsey & Company discovered that 30 million UK workers, approximately 94% of our workforce, will be displaced by technology if their skills aren’t updated by 2030.

Progressive organisations have emphasised the need for human capital development as we enter Industry 4.0. They have identified that human capital investment is the key to yielding positive economic returns.

An integral part of this solution is to identify skills shortages as they emerge, implement organisation-wide training and embed a culture of lifelong learning.

We are beginning to witness the creative deployment and reskilling of workplaces within pioneering organisations in the UK. 

With new technologies emerging and disrupting the traditional workforce, organisations are becoming more agile. Human Resources (HR) and Learning and Development (L&D) functions are challenging, and thereby innovating, the role they play within the wider organisation.

HR leaders have been at the centre of every organisation’s rapid response to the global pandemic and digital displacement. They have played a central role in keeping the workforce engaged, productive and resilient.

According to McKinsey & Company, business executives no longer hold sole ownership on training curriculum decisions. HR and L&D teams now play an active role in formulating strategic visions for training in the broader workplace.

Those responsible must successfully manage the development of people – and to do so in a way that aligns to market trends and enables the growth of the organisation.

L&D teams will collaborate with training providers, professional education bodies and business leaders to launch capability-building programs that address the global skills crisis.

The importance of industry-accredited bodies within the education and training sector is undeniable. They are the conduit between training providers, L&D teams and individual learners.

Employers have long recognised the value of industry-registered training qualifications. These qualifications equip workers with skills like managing change and navigating complexity in their fast-changing roles.

The CIPD, one of the UK’s largest professional bodies, has been a trusted career partner to over 15,000 HR and L&D practitioners since 1913. Following a turbulent year of economic disruptions, they have announced the release of new qualifications in an effort to realign the skills inequality.

The new qualifications, set to release in 2021, compliment their 2018 Profession Map. The Profession Map develops and updates the core and specialist knowledge of emerging and established practitioners.

The CIPD is not the first organisation to push for stronger skills training. We are expected to see a surge of industry associations and training providers pivot to workforce training delivery in the coming years.

Professional bodies are rapidly realising the role of workforce training and development in future-proofing the workforce.

This creates significant opportunities for education and training providers to pioneer innovative upskilling and reskilling programs that respond to our changing economy and labour demands.

With huge demand from employers aspiring to enhance their workforce through formal training, registered training providers are now in a privileged position to form strategic partnerships with accreditation bodies to design and implement future training programs.

Becoming an industry-recognised training provider attracts many benefits, these include:

While there is still a great deal of uncertainty around the future of work, it is clear learning and development qualifications will make a profound impact in the upskilling and reskilling of the UK workforce.

The relationship between L&D teams, professional bodies and training providers will be necessary to facilitate and embed a culture of continual employee training.

Our workforce has buckled under the weight of a post-pandemic recession — with concerning irregularities emerging within the Australian and New Zealand workforce.

The COVID-19 outbreak had a disproportionate impact on working women. They faced redundancies in larger numbers than their male counterparts, with a significant percentage compromising education and training for domestic responsibilities. Many are calling this crisis a ‘pink recession’. 

This ‘pink’ economic downturn presents a unique opportunity for training providers to reinvent education design and delivery. 

We will witness a pivot in the relationship between the education system and the world of work. Innovative training programs will be crucial to building a resilient workforce and pave a way for our economic recovery post-pandemic.

The effects of the pandemic will reverberate globally for years to come.

Our workforce has witnessed a great asymmetry when looking at the impacts to each gender.

Australian women lost jobs at a greater rate than males. A study conducted by Monash University recorded 55% of the total jobs lost in April were held by women, despite women only accounting for 47% of the overall workforce.

In the height of the pandemic, we witnessed the responsibilities of home learning and domestic duties fall to women. Females were three times more likely than males to take unpaid leave or resign to look after children or provide family care. 

Female enrolment in tertiary education also dropped significantly, with women accounting for three-quarters of the overall student decline in higher education in 2020. 

As we look beyond the pandemic, women will feel the effects of the decline in education and work opportunities for years to come.  

This presents a unique challenge for Australian and New Zealand education and training providers.

Providers have seen an increase in responsibility when it comes to their role in educating workers.

Changing technologies are causing disruptions to our job market and evolving our nature of work. Workers must determine how to adapt to rapidly changing conditions and employers must find the best approach to transition workers to emerging roles and responsibilities. 

Education providers play a pivotal role in reshaping education programs that directly impact learners and employers. Innovative learning pathways and short courses will deliver training in high-value skills and industries that address the challenges of our labour market.

For our economy to emerge stronger from the COVID-19 crisis, education providers must reinvent their training programs to meet the needs of the job market.

Providers must develop and pilot innovative education and training programs that better align with the modern world of work we face today. They need to create more opportunities to upskill or reskill workers to enable our workforce to bounce back stronger.  

During the pandemic, education provider BreakThrough Business Solutions set a goal to design and deliver a training program that addressed the growing pink recession in New Zealand. 

Fiona Clark, Director and Business Growth Specialist at BreakThrough, explains how they identified a gap in the entrepreneurial market and designed a course that met the needs of these female learners.

“Early in the pandemic, we noticed many small businesses struggling. Although a minority, female-led businesses were an extremely vulnerable group in our industry. They didn’t have the support of a community and were struggling to adapt to the digital market,” explains Clark. 

“We wanted to design and deliver a course that provides these women with entrepreneurial skills and the support they need to safeguard and scale their business.” 

Launched in December 2020, the new Women in Business program focuses on building the growth capacity of female-led businesses to combat the unemployment crisis in New Zealand. 

“Small businesses play a significant role in our economy. With rising unemployment numbers, it’s important that we prevent more women from becoming another government statistic,” says Clark.

Training providers face a learning curve as the global education system figures out the best approach to reshape their education programs. 

We developed a roadmap with three critical steps for providers when optimising existing or designing new course content.

As technology changes and new industries emerge, providers will need to adopt a proactive approach to their learning design. This stage involves diagnosing the existing capabilities of the workforce, including any skills gaps, and comparing them with future trends.

There are several paths providers can take when scoping the market:

In this stage, providers must approach learning design with innovative thinking. They must identify their ability to deliver training solutions that contribute to future-fitting the workforce.

Consider whether existing programs meet the specific needs of industry or whether there is the need to pivot educational content to fill in those market gaps.

Constructing a quality infrastructure for delivery requires the adoption of new technologies. As the future of work accelerates to a digital-first mentality, providers must prioritise online or blended learning as the solution. 

Providers must also look to embed digital literacy in their programs as we enter Industry 4.0. Injecting digital technology into the student learning experience will expose students to technological skills useful later in their careers.

Learn more on how providers can implement digital literacy in their courses.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a massive pink recession felt by the workforce in Australia and New Zealand. While there is no silver bullet to solve this crisis, innovative education and training programs will go a long way to bolstering our economic mobility.

Leading education providers will create more pathways for displaced workers to transition back into the workforce sooner rather than later.

Both the Australian and New Zealand education sectors have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, with travel restrictions and financial hardship resulting in a reduction in the number of international students in the country.

Here’s what this impact means for Australian and New Zealand education providers, and what could possibly be on the horizon for the sector.

The higher education sector in Australia has seen a large drop in international student numbers. From students returning to their home countries, being unable to re-enter Australia to resume their studies, or otherwise being unwilling or unable to continue their studies here, COVID-19 has hit the sector hard. With the virus first emerging in China (also the nation from which Australia sources the majority of its international students), thousands of students who had been home for the Lunar New Year found themselves unable to return to Australia for the start of the new school year. All in all, the Mitchell Institute estimates that the Australian economy will take a $60 billion dollar hit over the next three years due to this reduction of international students.

International students have been greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is in turn impacting the Australian economy and our higher education sector.

6 in 10 international students have reported losing their jobs due to the pandemic, while only 15% have been able to find a new job. With international students being overrepresented in hard-hit industries like hospitality and being ineligible for federal wage subsidies like JobKeeper and JobSeeker, the economic consequences have been devastating.

44% of international students fear they will be unable to pay their tuition fees, and 58% note that this financial stress has impaired their studies. Worryingly, over a third have said they may have to leave Australia before they can complete their studies.

The lack of support extended to international students has created a negative impression of Australia as a whole.

To “ensure Australia remains a priority destination for international students”,
acting immigration minister Alan Tudge recently announced a handful of visa changes.

Under these changes:

A pilot will also launch in September to let 300 students from China, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore back into the country, most likely to universities in NSW or the ACT. This scheme is intended to restore the higher education sector and preserve next year’s planned student intake, if the Victorian lockdown goes well.

It will likely take some time before Australia is able to attract the same numbers of international students as it used to. Many students have lost faith in the government’s ability or willingness to provide international student support, and fears of international travel will continue to hold many people back. Finally, the financial pressures of studying overseas may also discourage prospective students from considering Australia.

If the Australian education sector is able to pivot, we can expect international student numbers to slowly rise again. Some experts have even suggested merging universities for the sake of survival and sustainability, indicating that some massive changes could soon take place.

The Australian higher education sector is also faced with immediate challenges that are affecting staff and students today. 5,000 staff have lost their jobs at just two Melbourne institutions alone. Staff losses are typically associated with larger class sizes and lower quality teaching, meaning student dissatisfaction could become a pressing concern in the immediate future.

Australian education providers should work to keep prospective students updated on relevant issues such as start dates, entry requirements, and accommodation options. This information should also be relayed to education agents, and be specific to their individual clients.

As online study will likely remain the norm for some time, education providers also need to be clear on the benefits of studying and living in Australia, despite the lack of face-to-face class time. One way to offer support could be to waive the Student Services and Amenities Fee or provide tuition fee discounts if the school year commences entirely online.

Education providers should consider diversifying the countries from which they source students to improve the sustainability and resilience of the sector. It is also worth considering how to best respond to the concerns of students from key countries like China, India, Malaysia and Singapore.

Finally, some education providers are looking beyond academic and financial support, offering other forms of aid to struggling international students such as free meals.

The Australian education sector must rethink its sourcing of international students and how best to support prospective students during the decision-making process to rebuild the international student population in the country.

Demonstrating a commitment to international students and offering support will help to restore Australia’s reputation as a desirable study destination for students from around the world.

The Tertiary Education Commission (TEC)’s Statement of Performance Expectations sets performance expectations for the tertiary education sector for 2020/21, taking into account the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We look at some of the expectations that are set in this annual report, the performance indicators that are detailed, and how these performance measures are to be evaluated.

There is a clear commitment by the New Zealand government towards investing in education and training to provide positive outcomes to all New Zealanders. At the same time, the report acknowledges the impact of COVID-19, and the ways in which this disruption may affect the measures set by the TEC.

Some of the non-financial measures detailed in the report may no longer be relevant, be unable to be met or measured, or may otherwise need to be rethought. The financial measures that are included are done so with the New Zealand government’s COVID-19: Response and Recovery Fund Foundation Package in mind, meaning they should remain relevant and useful.

The TEC also reiterates its commitment to helping learners thrive in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic through short-term, medium-term and long-term responses. This will be done by creating a COVID-19 hub page to assist those who have been laid off in the retail, tourism or hospitality sectors; providing easier access to career planning information; and offering advice on writing CVs, setting up LinkedIn profiles and performing well in remote interviews.

The three principles underpinning the TEC’s commitments are:

1. Growing the economy and sharing the nation’s prosperity through collaborating with industry

2. Improving the wellbeing of citizens by ensuring all able individuals are earning, learning, caring or volunteering

3. Building a nation that all New Zealanders can be proud of, including building relationships with Māori and responding to Māori issues

The TEC is the government’s primary agency for implementing these objectives through creating an equitable funding system. The TEC’s strategic intentions can therefore be summed up as:

The Statement of Performance Expectations report also identifies seven areas of reform within the vocational education sector. These are:

1. Furthering the Workforce Development Council, which will take the initiative for future-proofing New Zealand’s workforce. All of the WDCs are expected to be fully functional by June 30 2021.

2. Enhancing Transitional Industry Training Organisations to support workplace-based training and delivering training in off-the-job settings. There will be further collaboration between TEC and the Transitional Industry Training Organisations to support learners and employers in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

3. Increasing the role of Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs), which will be responsible for driving innovation in the vocational education sector. The first two pilot CoVEs are expected to be established in July 2020.

4. Developing a unified funding system, which will be responsive to the needs of learners and employers. The funding system will likely be rolled out from 1 January 2023, with some components being implemented earlier to assist with COVID-19 recovery.

5. Greater collaboration with Te Taumata Aronui Engagement to ensure the programme meets the needs of iwi and Māori.

6. Better alignment of transformation initiatives and work plans to achieve reform outcomes, which is being done by establishing cross-agency governance forums.

7. Evaluating operational readiness of TEC and other government departments, which should be completed by September 2020.

The predicted outcome of these seven key changes is the creation of a stronger and more unified vocational education system, one which will be able to meet the needs of the future labour market and deliver the skills that learners, employers and communities require to thrive.

In total, $2.5 billion will be invested into the tertiary sector, and 140,000 apprentices and trainees are expected to transition to new training and education providers.

The TEC notes that there is still some way to go before there is parity between Māori and Pacific learners, and non-Māori and non-Pacific learners. In order to close these gaps, a systemic, comprehensive shift needs to occur.

The TEC will require tertiary education organisations to submit a learner success plan, and will also set minimum performance improvement targets in order to achieve equity.

In line with this, the TEC is also developing a diagnostic tool that tertiary education institutions can use to assess the efficacy of their learner success measures. This will allow organisations to ensure they are offering a high-quality, world-class education that improves the participation and achievement of all learners. Guided pathways, student-centric systems and data and technology are just some of the areas that will be assessed by this tool.

Some of the areas in which the TEC’s $2.5 billion investment will be distributed include:

For a more detailed look into resourcing and funding arrangements, or any other element of the report, view the full Statement of Performance Expectations here.

Quality teaching has never been more important than when recovering from such an event as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The TEC’s annual report clearly outlines areas for reform and investment strategies geared towards bettering New Zealand’s economy and society in light of recent challenges.

The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) released a report in late 2019 entitled “Online delivery of VET qualifications: current use and outcomes”, which discusses the state of online learning in the Australian VET sector.

These findings are particularly illuminating in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the implementation of VET activity has largely moved online.

So how are these findings relevant to the evolving educational landscape, what will online learning look like in the future, and why should VET providers consider switching to delivering their courses online?

With the online delivery of vocational education and training (VET) courses gaining momentum due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCVER report on the online delivery of VET qualifications becomes important to revisit. The report presents some surprising findings on the current state of online delivery of VET qualifications, addressing student outcomes, completion rates, student satisfaction and more.

At the time of the report, VET courses that were delivered entirely online were found to have higher non-completion rates than other modes of training. At the same time, however, students who did complete their course enjoyed similar employment outcomes to those who took subjects delivered via other delivery modes, demonstrating how online learning can enrich the student learning experience if implemented correctly.

The findings presented in the NCVER report provide a roadmap to registered training organisations (RTOs) and TAFEs currently attempting to implement online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

One challenge the VET sector faces is that VET teaching typically requires a concrete skill set to be developed, using a competency-based training system. Online skills development can be difficult, and online courses will have to be designed extremely well to generate the same outcomes as face-to-face classes.

As mentioned above, online VET learning was also found to have lower completion rates than other modes of delivery. This presents a challenge to educators who have now been forced to move all teaching online due to COVID-19. If online training and teaching is carried out appropriately, however, students can expect to enjoy similar outcomes to those who have completed face-to-face studies.

The report goes on to identify five key factors that contribute to good practice in online course delivery, which will help to inform successful learning experiences during and post-COVID.

These include:

To improve the outcomes for online learning, NCVER suggests greater involvement by the Australian Qualifications Framework to create guidelines on when a qualification is unsuited to a completely online delivery, and to create consistency in qualification specifications of delivery aspects like work placements.

There are plenty of challenges and benefits offered by online learning that must be worked through, given the education sector’s current reliance on it.

Some challenges include:

Finally, if an online course is designed poorly, this could also impact withdrawals and course completion rates.

Some positives identified in the report include:

With most forms of education being forced online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, educators and assessors can look to the NCVER report for guidance, guidelines and best practice recommendations.

The report draws light to some factors that have been shown to positively influence student satisfaction with online learning, which include:

With a great deal of learning now being offered online, educators and VET providers have an opportunity to elevate the quality of their online delivery.

The National Centre for Vocational Education Research’s “Online delivery of VET qualifications: current use and outcomes” report provides some excellent stepping stones for the education sector as it grapples with the online delivery of training and further education.

When it comes to delivering a speedy message to your students, SMS is the number one tool for your list.

Almost every business uses Email Marketing in one way or another, however, not as many have incorporated SMS into their marketing strategy to help drive revenue to their business.

While SMS and Email Marketing both achieve similar outcomes, it’s important to understand that they can and should be used together.

Compared to Email, SMS reaches more people, which ultimately results in higher conversion rates.

While this is the most obvious benefit of the tool, it’s important to adopt a testing approach and exercise caution with your campaigns.

SMS can sometimes be costly due to the variations in cost per send and also character limits when compared with Email Marketing.

However, when used correctly, SMS can generate some amazing results for businesses in the Education Industry.

SMS and Email work together to create seamless customer experiences.

While both channels can be used in the same way, this shouldn’t be your only approach.

Use both tools in a way that complements the other.

For example, in the scenario of a student not opening a particular email that contains important enrolment information, try sending them an SMS to prompt them to check their inbox.

They may be more receptive to that mode of communication and just needed that extra reminder to engage with your content.

While there is significant overlap between these two modes, they should adopt vastly different messaging approaches.

Emails should be more creative, emotive, and influential, whereas SMS should be more direct and to-the-point.

The other main difference between the two channels is ‘level of invasiveness’.

SMS is a much more invasive approach, which naturally results in a significantly higher open rate and conversion rate.

Close to 100% of people that you send the SMS to will at the very least see your message, whereas with Email the number is much closer to 20%.

As mentioned above, the most obvious benefit of utilising SMS is the extremely high open rate and conversion rate you’ll achieve.

However, there are many other benefits that you’ll enjoy when utilising this tool.

Some other benefits include:

To get the most out of SMS, a high level of testing is necessary to understand what works with your target audience. Having a testing framework in place will help you gain an understanding of what types of messaging work best.

For example, if you want to understand if SMS is a good tool to capture data from your subscribers, try sending one to a small portion of your database and then look at:

All this data is highly valuable to discover whether these types of messages resonate with your audience.

Some other tests you can run could be around the type of language you use in your messages.

Does a more personal message work better than a general, automated-sounding message?

Some other tests include:

Through a series of small tests that focus on exploring one thing, you’ll naturally begin to gain a well-rounded view on the types of messages you should and shouldn’t send to your students and prospective students.

While we’ve uncovered the benefits of SMS Marketing, it is also important to discuss some of the drawbacks. Compared to Email Marketing, the opt-out rates of SMS are significantly higher, and this is to be expected due to its invasive nature.

SMS is also a more costly method of communication.

Depending on the service you use, the cost can range anywhere from 2.5 cents per send to as much as 8 cents per send or more. While this doesn’t sound like much, it adds up and highlights the importance of getting your cost per send as low as possible.

For example, sending to 10,000 people at 2.5 cents will cost $250, whereas sending to the same number of people at 7 cents will cost $700, which is a substantial difference.

This reiterates that restraint must be used when sending out SMS campaigns.

If you send SMS communication to your entire database and hope for the best, you’re likely to cost the business thousands of dollars and could potentially impact your brand image and credibility.

This can lead to your audience becoming less receptive to your future messages.
Furthermore, character limits must also be taken into consideration.

In Australia, you can typically use a maximum of 160 characters per SMS send.

If you go over that, you’ll be charged double or even triple, depending on the length of your message.

It’s also important to note that you legally must include Opt-out instructions which take up valuable characters.

Tip: Be careful when using personalisation strings in your SMS, as this element could make you go over the character limit. For example, if you want to include ‘First Name’ in your message, you should expect a portion of your audience to have long first names.

Overall, SMS is an extremely valuable tool for businesses in the Education Industry to engage with prospective student audiences and communicate effectively through the student journey.

Like any marketing tool, you should pursue a continuous testing and optimisation approach towards your SMS communications.

When used in isolation or in conjunction with email marketing, SMS is incredibly powerful.

You will start to gain a better understanding of your students and the positive results will follow.

With digital disruption becoming the norm, new skills are necessary to meet the evolving business needs of the workforce. As a result of this, the learning needs of the workforce are constantly changing.

A recent report by Deloitte and RMIT Online entitled ‘Learn. Work. Repeat’ explores the concept of lifelong learning, and its growing importance in the ever-changing world of work.

From embracing self-directed learning to putting learning programs in action at workplaces, here’s how Australians can keep continuing education throughout their lives.

The traditional model of completing your higher education in your 20s, working for decades and retiring is quickly becoming outdated.

Australian jobs are changing, with new technologies and industry transformations meaning new knowledge is needed.

Australians are also living and working longer, meaning the formal education gained in their youth will likely need a refresh.

The recent shockwaves created by the COVID-19 outbreak further supports the importance of continuous learning, illustrating how quickly the needs of the economy can change.

Millions of people are suddenly having to deal with the challenges of working from home, or even finding themselves completely out of work.

A lifelong learning approach is needed to equip employees with the skills to excel throughout their careers, even in times of trouble.

Interestingly, continuous learning is beneficial for both employers and employees.

Offering more than just personal growth for the employee, lifelong learning also improves an individual’s performance, job security and job satisfaction.

From increased earnings and a greater chance of promotion to receiving more diverse work opportunities, a commitment to ongoing learning proves to be highly rewarding for employees.

Employers also benefit from their employees learning skills on a consistent basis, allowing for greater innovation within the company.

95% of employers surveyed stated that they believed they would receive some benefits from their employees engaging in continuous learning, with two-thirds believing that these benefits are shared equally between the business and the individual employee.

Using informal learning as an example (such as an individual’s own learning efforts through listening to podcasts or watching YouTube videos), businesses are found to experience a 1% increase in productivity while employee wages rise by 0.5% after just one hour of learning.

So what skills should employees and employers be looking at cultivating, and how can this be done?

As the world of work becomes increasingly automated, soft skills are becoming more important than ever.

In fact, it is estimated that two-thirds of Australian jobs will be soft-skill intensive by 2030.

According to the Deloitte report’s findings, 62% of employers identify leadership and problem-solving skills as being difficult to find.

53% of employers are also seeking creativity skills, while the latest industry knowledge is difficult for 53% of employers to find. Critical thinking, customer service and digital literacy are other vital skills lifelong learners should be looking at seriously.

Understandably, it is not realistic for everyone to re-enter the education system just to pick up new skills. Many employers are instead offering professional development opportunities in the workforce, with 85% of surveyed businesses providing internal and external training opportunities to address skill shortages.

Employers should foster a collective understanding of lifelong learning across the organisation, which can be done by:

There are also plenty of opportunities outside of the workplace for employees to pursue further training and education.

Lifelong learning can be informal or formal, with informal learning being self-organised and unstructured, and formal learning involving recognition from an educational institution or organisation.

Most lifelong learners prefer short courses to postgraduate degrees or professional accreditations, due to the shorter time frame and reduced cost.

The availability, diversity and quality of online learning make ongoing learning easier than ever, with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) providing open access to qualification and non-qualification based learning.

Lifelong learning is needed to create a resilient and responsive workforce, with both employees and employers benefiting from an investment in education and training.

Since the novel coronavirus outbreak (or COVID-19), schools and universities around the world have had to adapt to the new world order.

From school closures to online learning, we explore how the global and Australian education sectors are responding to and reshaping as a result of COVID-19.

The rapid spread of COVID-19 has affected all tiers of the education sector in a matter of a few short weeks, from early childhood education all the way up to higher education.

IBIS World summarises the Australian education sector’s response to COVID-19 thus far:

As the situation progresses, we may start to see longer-lasting changes relating to innovations in the delivery of education and partnerships between private and public schools.

COVID-19 has acted as a catalyst for education service providers around the world to look for innovative teaching solutions in a short period of time.

In Australia, we’ve seen high schools and universities try to transition to an online learning model, while school students in Hong Kong and China have been leading the way in online teaching solutions, with mandatory virtual classrooms and the like.

At the same time, however, the transition to online learning has been difficult for students and teachers around the world.

In Australia, there have been calls that our NBN speeds are not equipped for mass online learning.

In other countries, however, there is a significant lack of personal digital devices for students to use.

With advanced technology becoming more readily available in countries like Australia, the United States, and several places throughout Asia, we are likely to see learners and education providers implement digital education in a variety of formats.

This will likely remain in place long after the COVID-19 crisis has passed, with traditional classroom-based learning being complemented with live broadcasts, online learning modules and even virtual reality experiences.

At the same time, the shift from online classes back to face-to-face learning will likely also be disruptive, with students having to adjust back to a relative lack of flexibility, handing in hard copies of assignments, and having to attend tutorials in person.

Ideally, our education system will become more digitally ready and able to provide a flexible, dynamic responsive learning environment, available at the click of a button when we need it.

The events of the past few weeks have seen various stakeholders collaborate on creating digital platform solutions in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

In places where education has largely been provided by the federal government, the landscape of learning could change drastically.

For example, China’s Ministry of Education has worked alongside various parties to develop a cloud-based online learning and broadcasting platform, as well as upgrade various education infrastructures.

Hong Kong also established a consortium of over 60 different publishers, educational organisations, media and entertainment industry professionals to create hundreds of educational assets which are available to students for free.

The consortium intends to continue using these assets even after the current crisis is over.

Due to the coronavirus outbreak, educational innovation now means a lot more than just government or non-profit funded social projects.

There is now also greater interest and investment from tech giants around the world, with the pandemic potentially opening the door for large-scale, cross-industry collaborations aimed towards a common educational goal.

From this public health crisis, our education system is likely to emerge as more resilient, responsive and dynamic.

The pandemic also highlights the digital and creative skills students will need for the world of the future.

For online learning to be carried through successfully in the future, the diversity of student needs must be recognised, a strong teacher presence must be provided, and an interactive and engaging course design must be offered.

The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) has recently released its annual report on TEQSA registered Higher Education providers.

The organisation is Australia’s independent national quality assurance and regulatory agency for higher education, with the report providing an insight into the current state of the higher education sector in Australia.

Key Takeaways:

The report points to the size and diversity of the Australian Higher Education sector, with 172 registered providers enrolling 1,537,081 students for all or part of 2017.

There has also been a moderate increase in student participation, with there being a 4% rise in the number of students between 2016 and 2017:

The number of international students is of particular note, with there being a 10% increase in the international student population from 2016 to 2017.

As of 2018, China remains the main international source market for universities and not-for-profit provider categories, while India is the main source market for the for-profit provider category.

The Higher Education courses of study with the highest growth were Health and Education, rising by 4% each from 2016 to 2017. This points towards a greater awareness among students of the skills gaps set to emerge as Australia’s education and healthcare needs continue to grow.

Overall student numbers are still highest in the Management and Commerce fields of study, which have both the highest number of undergraduate and post-graduate students.

69% of Australia’s student population are domestic students, while 31% are international students. 75% of students are undertaking an undergraduate degree, while 25% are pursuing postgraduate qualifications.

92.2% of TEQSA providers are universities, while 5.2% are for-profit institutions, 2.1% are not-for-profit institutions, and 0.5% are TAFEs. 42% of providers are registered in NSW, while 26% are in Victoria.

11 non-university providers had partial or full self-accrediting authority in 2017 (including one for-profit provider that was granted partial self-accrediting authority), hinting at the growing legitimacy of non-university education pathways.

New course accreditation has dropped compared to previous years, decreasing in every broad field of education (BFoE) and all of the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) levels except AQF level 7. The decline can be attributed to the introduction of the new standards, which came into effect on 1 January 2017.

Management and Commerce BFoE continue to have the largest number of course accreditations, followed by the Society and Culture BFoE (together accounting for 60% of new course accreditations in 2017).

Australia’s student body continues to increase alongside its population, and as Australian educational institutions continue to draw the attention of international students. With the rise of education services for overseas students, these numbers can be expected to grow.

The popularity of Management and Commerce may be explained by the fields’ global relevance and appeal in the eyes of international students.

While universities still have the highest proportion of students, there has also been a gradual increase in student enrolments at other provider types, such as for-profit, not-for-profit and TAFE, for the past four years. The overseas sector experienced the largest growth out of all provider types, with not-for-profit providers seeing a 23% increase in overseas students from 2015.

A flexible student experience also seems to be a top priority for today’s learner, with there being a 39% increase in the number of commencing students attending via a flexible delivery mode since 2015. At the same time, however, the number of commencing students attending via a flexible delivery mode at TAFE and not-for-profit institutions declined by 30% and 19% respectively in 2016.

The Australian Higher Education sector continues to grow, drawing in more international students than ever. Provider categories are also diversifying further, catering to more types of students than ever before.