campusreview. com. au
VET & TAFE
Victorian Labour Party, which started the shifting of funds away from TAFE when it was previously in power as the Brumby government, picked up the community concern about the reduction of funds for TAFE institutes and campaigned effectively on a policy plank of restoring them as a community and economic asset.
Ironically, although Victoria was the first state to embrace the marketisation of VET and the shifting of funds to the private sector, five years later, this policy was a major cause of the fall of the Coalition government.
ON THE SURFACE On the surface, the 2014 House of Representatives report is a call to current and future federal governments, on all sides of politics, to take a positive view of the role and importance of the public provider and to protect it from destruction. The report opened with this rousing summary:
“ The intrinsic value of TAFE as an Australian asset was clearly evident throughout this inquiry. As put by the TAFE Community Alliance,‘ TAFE is not a business, it’ s a public institution … [ it’ s ] about putting back into the community’, a notion that was supported by not only interest groups, but also by students, industry, universities and the wider Australian community.”
The report then recommended that the Australian Government make a public statement about the value of TAFE and how it can thrive in a competitive market:
“ This report’ s main message is a strong emphasis on the value of TAFE in the Australian community and, as such, the committee believes that the Australian Government should acknowledge this value with a statement through the Council of Australian Governments.
“ This statement should define the role of TAFE in the Vocational Education and Training( VET) sector and acknowledge the unique functions that TAFE, as a major public provider, can contribute. The statement should also set the future direction for TAFE as it operates within the competitive training market …”
The report also unpacked the various contexts within which TAFE, the giant player in the sector, adds value nationally:
“ The TAFE sector is the largest education and training sector in Australia, with 61 government-owned TAFE institutes and university TAFE divisions. This report considers TAFE in a number of different contexts: TAFE’ s position in the skilling of Australia’ s workforce; the role it plays in the provision of pathways to employment and university; its community support role; and the competitive environment in which it operates.”
Drilling further, the report identified fundamental areas in which TAFE plays a role in national skills development; for example, in providing a second-chance education and pathways to employment and further study:
“ TAFE plays a significant role in the development of skills that are essential to the Australian economy. Australia is no stranger to mass redundancies and closures of large-scale manufacturing plants, which leave many people out of work. Historically, TAFE has been invaluable in reskilling and providing these often mature-aged workers new opportunities, particularly where many have not undertaken training or further education for many years and in some cases at all.
“ TAFE is an important provider of secondchance education and is often a pathway to employment and university, avenues that are frequently supported through partnerships with industry and universities.”
The House of Representatives’ report gained scant attention. It is more than an endorsement of TAFE; it unintentionally provides the rationale for overhauling the controversial market-based approach to the funding of VET providers – an approach that spawned Vocation and provoked the public backlash in Victoria.
The report’ s authors called on the government to make a statement that TAFE is a“ not-for-profit public provider”, implicitly free from the temptation of exploiting students for financial gain:“ This statement should recognise that the affordability and accessibility of the training market is underpinned by a strong public-sector provider and acknowledges the following functions that TAFE, as a major and significant not-for-profit public provider, can uniquely bring to the VET sector.”
The report also called on the government to close loopholes that attract rogue operators:
“ The Australian Government should continue its current actions through the Australian Skills Quality Authority, other regulators, national Training Standards and any involved parties, to take suitable action to address loopholes that are allowing high-risk and unscrupulous practices to endanger the experience of students and the reputation of training provision.”
The report also showed that any reform of TAFE is not the panacea for improving the performance of the sector. Improving efficiencies in TAFE is not the main issue in VET.
The big issues in VET are reviewing the governance of the sector, the architecture for decision-making, the contents of training packages, the quality of assessment and the linkages with industry and higher education. For example, the report recommended changes to training packages and a switch from focusing on inputs to measuring the outputs of the skills sector. The authors recommended:
“ That the Australian Government addresses ongoing concerns about the highly variable quality of training. Two approaches are possible and may be applied differentially depending on the particular circumstance:
• seeking a greater level of prescription and precision around national training packages; or, alternatively,
• tasking the ASQA, or relevant state authorities, to develop more output-based measures that focus on assessment of skills acquired.”
BEYOND THE NOISE The report was well timed. The Victorian state election and ASQA’ s reports, plus the numerous media exposés of training providers rorting the system, and more, have combined to show the attacks on TAFE over the last five years were not thought through.
It is now clear that during those years, governments have unwittingly created the conditions for rogue operators and avoided the tackling of more difficult structural issues in VET, such as vagueness in training packages about the volume of learning in any course.
If the Commonwealth government is serious about reforming VET, it will issue a statement about the high value of TAFE, as called for by the multiparty House of Representatives committee, and accept the recommendations of the report. Time will tell whether the government wants to contribute to more noise about the VET sector or to improving it. ■
Dr John Mitchell is a VET researcher and analyst. See jma. com. au
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