Critical to the success of any defence force—including the civilian agencies which support it—is the training and development that each person, individually and collectively, undergoes. Today the typical ADF member will pass through a number of courses during his or her career. Many of these courses will make internal sense and allow certain boxes to be ticked along career and professional pathways, and others appear to be conducted for the sole purpose of being seen to conduct training.

There seems, however, to be little symmetry or cohesion across the wide range of training activities which members of the ADF must undertake and the models around which these activities are framed. The result is a general view of military education as a process, rather than a quality outcome for the individual and the ADF—and a very real concern that members aren’t gaining a systematic and integrated body of knowledge which contributes to the mastery of their profession.

Over the past 20 years, training and education in the ADF has gone through a number of changes and attempted enhancements. Included in this has been the adoption of a vocational education and training (VET) system aligned with the national qualifications framework and various iterations of the traditional Systems Approach to Training (SAT). Read more