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QVET, a new member-based body for private vocational education and training (VET) providers which will insist on high quality standards for its membership, plans to launch next month . It will deliberately exclude the minority of VET providers with probity issues, which are giving private VET a bad name.

Applicants for membership to QVET will be admitted after passing a “rigorous, transparent quality audit process”.

“We want to make it really clear-cut that there is an entity that industry and government can talk to that represents only high-quality providers,” said Jonathan Marshall, one of the QVET founders.

QVET appears to be headed for a showdown with Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia, which said tersely, in response to a request for comment on QVET, that it held “a pre-eminent position as the authoritative voice of registered training organisations with a commitment to excellence”.

VET expert Claire Field, a former head of the Australian Council for Private Education and Training (the predecessor of ITECA) said that in her time at ACPET “rigorous additional quality requirements for membership” were introduced. “Regrettably” they had been wound down, she said.

“The Australian VET sector desperately needs a mechanism like this (QVET) to restore badly damaged trust,” Ms Field said.

Until next Wednesday