Career guidance: the missing piece in Australia’s skills agenda
National Skills Week is an important opportunity to celebrate the role vocational education and training plays in changing lives, building careers and strengthening Australia’s workforce.
But it also gives us an opportunity to ask an important question: are we doing enough to help people find the right pathway in the first place?
Australia is investing significantly in apprenticeships, traineeships, Fee-Free TAFE and other skills initiatives. These investments matter. But training places alone do not ensure people make informed choices about their futures.
People need access to quality career guidance that helps them understand their strengths and aspirations, make sense of labour market information, explore education and training options, and navigate transitions throughout their working lives.
At the moment, access to that support remains fragmented.
For a young person considering their first career direction, an adult looking to retrain, or a worker whose industry is being transformed by technology, the quality of career support available can depend heavily on where they live, where they study or work, and which services they happen to encounter.
That is why CICA is using National Skills Week 2026 to call for a National Lifelong Career Guidance Framework.
Such a framework would give Australia a coordinated approach across education, training and employment. It would establish clear national goals, strengthen professional standards, improve access and equity, build a stronger evidence base and ensure career guidance is considered as part of workforce and skills policy rather than as an add-on.
The principle is simple: career guidance connects people to training, and training to meaningful and sustainable employment.
If Australia wants to get the greatest possible return from its investment in skills, we need to invest just as deliberately in helping people make informed decisions about where those skills can take them.
National Skills Week is a fitting time to put career guidance firmly on the national skills agenda.
