VET
Strange days
This year was loaded with unusual happenings for the sector, raising many questions for 2014. By John Mitchell
This was an odd year for the VET sector, increasing the likelihood that 2014 will be even more strange. Following on from 2012, which was characterised by the unprecedented exposures of shonky training providers, 2013 offered observers a motley collection of developments.
One of the oddest included the different ways state governments interpreted the concept of developing a VET market and creating a level playing field for public and private entities; some TAFE providers were randomly stripped of historical market advantages. For example, in 2013, the Queensland Government decided to take away from TAFE Institutes the ownership of their physical assets, mainly their buildings. No other government has followed this initiative, which could put the Queensland TAFE Institutes at a disadvantage given the increasing trend to a national market.
It’ s also strange that various state governments are progressing at different rates in implementing their version of a contestable market for VET providers. In 2013, the South Australian Government implemented its variation of the Victorian model, whilst Queensland and Western Australia announced their models and then later in the year NSW postponed the implementation of its Smart and Skilled model until early 2015. Given the SA Government quickly experienced budget blowouts as in Victoria, why the rush to imitate Victoria? Perhaps the slowest state, NSW, will waste the least money.
It’ s noteworthy that many small private providers were, apparently, severely
36 | campusreview. com. au disrupted by the SA Government’ s implementation of its market strategies and the fast exhaustion of funding for some qualifications. Bureaucrat-driven markets can hurt high-quality private providers, not just TAFE.
But perhaps the oddest document to emerge in 2013 was one from the Victorian Government early in the year, calling on TAFE Institutes to become more commercial, whilst about the same time the government took greater control of the board appointments for the state’ s various TAFE institutes.
In this new environment, where state governments are artificially creating a VET market, some of the senior public servants driving these structural changes are presenting their private sector credentials to the market, for instance in their bios at conferences. In the new order, is the best career path for a VET public servant some early experience in a major consulting firm, then a stint in public service to drive the marketisation of VET, then perhaps moving back to the consulting firm?
In March, the National Skills Standards Council( NSSC) released a proposed revision of the national quality standards. The proposals were improvements on the old version, but some of the related recommendations from earlier papers were diluted.
For instance, the requirement for each provider to employ an accountable education officer with a university degree was changed to a person with a diploma. More rigorous standards now will be monitored by officers who are less qualified.
John Dawkins, the chairperson of the NSSC, in an interview for Campus Review in March, indicated that the implementation of the new quality standards might need to wait until a new federal government was elected and briefed. What is driving VET policy more, protracted government cycles or reputedly urgent market pressures?
Also unexpected was the revelation in the national press in late 2013 that Dawkins was now the chair of a new private provider, Vocation Ltd, to be listed on the stock exchange.
Good luck to him in this new venture, but the two roles seem an uncomfortable fit given that, apparently, much of the expected revenue of Vocation will be government funding.
What awaits us in 2014? Will governments intervene even more in the business of TAFE institutes, whilst still telling TAFE to become more commercial? Will more public servants and officers embrace the pre-global financial crisis philosophy of marketising public services? Will governments keep overspending, in the rush to rid themselves of the current expenditure on the public provider TAFE? Will more small training providers seek to leave the sector, driven out by the so-called market-focused strategies of government policy makers?
Most importantly, will the Australian people become disillusioned with increasingly odd approaches to the privatisation of the VET sector? n
John Mitchell is a VET researcher and analyst. Go to jma. com. au