The Australian Industry and Skills Committee (AISC) have approved a number of projects out of the Annual Update to the IRC Skills Forecast and Proposed Schedule of Work, which was submitted earlier this year.
The projects approved in Animal Care and Management for 2020-2021 are listed below. Work on these projects will commence in the coming few months. If you are interested in participating as a subject matter expert for any of these skills, please contact us. There will be several opportunities to provide feedback on these projects over the next six months or more, details will be shared through this newsletter and the Skills Impact website and social media channels.
Equine Care Careers
There are transferable skills across a variety of sectors involved in the care of equines. Existing qualifications and skills standards will be reviewed and repackaged as part of this project to enable a variety of job outcomes and reduce complexity in the VET system. To achieve this, a ‘job family’ is being proposed by the IRC to reflect the ‘equine care’ sector, which groups a range of current and emerging occupations, such as performance horse (equestrian events), rescue centres, sanctuaries agistments, and allied health services (massage, body workers, saddle/equipment fitting, dentistry). Skills standards in these sectors would also be revised to meet industry expectations for practical skills in handling traditional and modern equine tools, horse safety, horse behaviour and horse welfare.
Pre-Requisite Barriers To Training
The aim of this project is to remove barriers to training and to strengthen skills in horse safety, behaviour and welfare. Extensive industry consultation and feedback from the IRC-led Equine Industry Survey has suggested that pre-requisite units should be removed. More effective ongoing learning could be achieved by embedding horse safety, behaviour and welfare skills in every practical unit of competency. This will negate the need for prerequisite units and remove barriers to developing specialist skills and knowledge. It will also support the robustness and consistency of training, and will reflect the holistic approach to equine welfare that survey participants overwhelmingly demanded.