Growing Australia’s digital workforce

Wyndham shapes the digital future

Improving training delivery

A West Melbourne school is paving the way for future-focused tech education by making tech relevant to the future workforce and their teachers.

Wyndham Tech School is a STEM Centre of Excellence where industry, education and community collaborate to shape the future. It supports secondary schools in the Wyndham and Hobsons Bay areas by teaching year 7 to 12 students STEM skills in a fun and interactive way.

All of Wyndham’s courses advocate digital literacy for everybody while giving those who have an interest in becoming digital experts the chance to go deeper.

One popular program, designed with industry and education leaders, is the Future of Work. Designed for entire year levels it is focused on collaboration and creativity whilst building digital skills across all learning areas. It has recently been expanded to cover cutting-edge topics and technologies, such as AI, data science and drones.

The school also offers a Digital Accelerator Program for teachers. The two-day program features hands-on experience with technological tools, enhancing understanding of how to embed the tools in and across different teaching disciplines.

Wyndham Tech School is made possible by the vision of the Victorian State Government, supported by annual funding from the Department of Education and Training and hosted by Victoria University (VU), A dual sector university.

“We work closely with our industry partners to design industry-driven curriculum and projects for students, focused on the digital and enterprise skills in demand by industry, now and in the future.”

“It’s about inspiring young people, supporting them to achieve their best, and aligning industry and education to create clear pathways into the jobs of the future.”

Sam Nikolsky, Acting Director, Wyndham Tech School

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About the Digital Skills Organisation

The Digital Skills Organisation (DSO) was established in 2020 by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR; formerly Department of Education, Skills and Employment) as one of three industry-led Skills Organisation Pilots, alongside Human Services and Mining.

Its establishment was as a result of the Australian Government’s ‘Strengthening Skills: Expert Review of Australia’s Vocational Education and Training System’ 2019 report. This recognised emerging evidence of a growing supply and demand gap for workers with digital skills, and system barriers to closing this gap.

DEWR described DSO’s remit to “shape the national training system, testing innovative solutions to ensure digital training meets the skills needs of employers and builds Australia’s digital workforce”.

The funding period was for three years to June 2023. Subsequently, the introduction of ten Jobs and Skills Councils (JSCs) from June 2023 provides the opportunity to consider how learnings from the DSO trials can inform work priorities for the Finance, Technology and Business (FTB) JSC.

Acknowledgements

The DSO acknowledges the collaboration and input to the work of the DSO of the Tech Council of Australia (TCA), Australian Computer Society (ACS), Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), Digital Employment Forum (DEF), VET (Vocational Education and Training) peak associations, including the TAFE Working Group, the Australian Government departments and agencies, state and territory governments, training providers, community groups and schools. The DSO also acknowledges the range of organisations and individuals who have contributed to, or participated in, the trials undertaken as part of the DSO’s work.

About this report

This report is a contribution to fulfilling the DSO’s remit. Specifically, it seeks to:

Define Australia’s current and future digital skilling needs, including assessing supply and demand gaps
Synthesise the activities and progress the DSO has made to address Australia’s digital skilling needs, and the potential to close the skilling gap
Identify opportunities for the JSC for FTB to continue collaboration with governments, industry, unions, registered training organisations, community groups and the other nine JSCs to progress Australia’s national approach to digital skilling.

The report draws on a range of quantitative and qualitative research and analytics inputs. This includes workforce and skills data insights, analysis of data from the training sector, insights from industry engagement, and evaluation of DSO trials.

Further information about the technical elements of the method is included in Appendix A.