Applications for the Industry Skills Fund–Growth Stream have opened today.
The Industry Skills Fund–Growth Stream aims to assist industry to invest in training and support services, as well as develop training solutions. The Fund, valued at $476 million, will offer 200,000 training places and training support services over the next four years.
The Fund is specifically focused on helping micro and small-to-medium sized businesses identify and access training and support for their business and employees, however large businesses are not entirely excluded. Under the Fund there will be two types of assistance–skills advice and training grants.
Skills advice is focused on helping businesses find training solutions to help businesses grow and involves a skills adviser providing tailored advice and recommendations in business growth training and business growth training support services.The advice and recommendations will involve businesses participating in activities that can help increase competitiveness for growth opportunities and growth training outcomes respectively, as well activities that will help improve daily operations.
Training grants are more suitable for businesses who are aware of the training needed for their businesses to grow. Training grants can help cover the costs of nationally recognised training, training accredited through state and territory systems and training required to navigate export barriers and/or to access foreign markets. However the training grants will not cover the costs of training that allows businesses to comply with legislative requirements, training that they should provide themselves, Vocational Education and Training that is subsidised, training delivered by applicants and related parties of applicants and training activities that don’t build learners’ skills.
Businesses who apply for and successfully obtain a training grant will have to make a co-contribution to costs. The size of the contributions will depend on the size of their business.
Businesses can apply either as an individual business or through a consortium. More information on eligibility can be found here and more information on merit criteria can be found here.
More information on the Industry Skills Fund can be found here.