Mr. Tom Rourke:

I thank members for their questions. I will put the industry relationship in context. There is definitely a bias in our specific proposal in regard to ICT which is largely due to our origins, but I do not think by any means that the model would be confined to this. In the past 14 years the Fast Track to IT, FIT, model has been a collaboration between industry and government to try to get people from very disadvantaged communities into employment. What we have learned relates to the tighter coupling of the needs of industry and understanding those skills informing the curriculum that allow people to progress into employment. The ICT industry is egalitarian and if people have the skills and capabilities, they can rise without being affected by the other social constraints in the more traditional professions. That is the reason we have such a strong focus on ICT.

There is a variation in the skill needs of multinational companies. I know that my company and those of some of the other representatives present do have heavy research and development functions and there is a variation in functions. One of the challenges is trying to find people with the right skills level in the mid tier, which is exactly the point highlighted in the research we published last week. One of the appeals of this model is that it specifically addresses this, but without putting constraints on people and their ability to progress. What one finds in a large complex multinational company is that they will tend to pull in lots of functions and when somebody starts in a particular role or discipline, one does not tend to limit where they will go within the organisation. Once they are in, they will move; the problem is the entry point, when it is defined exclusively at a graduate level, limits the number of people who come in. We have two problems in that regard. There is a cluster of people who simply do not gain access. This is unfortunate because there are ample opportunities if they had the right mid-tier skills. I emphasise this point from an industry point of view. We are very supportive because of the gaps we see in our own business. I appreciate the worries people might have about limiting individuals' ability to progress, but that is our experience of taking the more traditional FIT graduates who have not come through this apprenticeship type model; a number of people from what would not have been considered obvious paths have risen in organisations once they were in. The challenge is to match people in real jobs in the first instance.