campusreview. com. au
ON CAMPUS of the report by the Australian Greens’ Senators, while usefully challenging the underlying policy of the marketisation of VET, also offers a random suggestion about the exact amount of government funding( 85 per cent) that should be accessible only by TAFE. This highly specific suggestion stands out as a quirky idea, sure to inflame public debate.
Meanwhile, the first 4½ of the five chapters of the report, which can now be read as largely the views of the dominant Labor Party senators, contain a wild idea for how to solve the explosion in funding for VET FEE-HELP and the reduction in the number of completions by these funded students. That solution is to conduct an“ urgent blitz” of all 4609 VET providers as at January 1, 2015:
“ The committee recommends that the Department of Education and Training and the Australian Skills Quality Authority conduct a concerted and urgent blitz of all providers to ensure they are consistently complying with the national standards, especially those relating to student recruitment,” the report states.“ This blitz should be aimed at defending the interests of students, enforcing adherence to [ Australian Qualifications Framework ] volume of learning standards and removing non-compliant RTOs as VET FEE-HELP providers.”
The blitz recommendation, while well intentioned, is not only wacky, but also unrealistic, because elsewhere the report carefully documents that the ASQA has been able to audit only 57 per cent of the training providers in Australia from mid-2011 to late 2014. How can it now quickly blitz the lot?
Additionally, elsewhere in the report the senators acknowledge that the AQF guidelines are loose and some new ways are required to prescribe the number of hours of learning for each course.
Another recommendation suggests that“ the government apply, in consultation with industry and quality providers, minimum hours standards to VET FEE-HELP eligible providers”. Based on VET’ s history of taking years to make any significant changes to training packages and standards for providers, negotiating these minimum hours to so many courses with so many stakeholders will reduce the regulatory blitz to a crawl.
POSSIBLE UNINTENDED BENEFITS The Senate report does make some useful contributions to the public discussion about the problems occurring in VET and provides some possible responses, although some of those contributions were probably unintended. For example, if there is a future royal commission or similar investigation, the report will prevent public servants from using the same defence as their colleagues who appeared before the‘ pink batts’ inquiry. That group’ s argument was that they didn’ t realise the program would lead to deaths, corruption and business collapses, they were simply implementing a program in line with government policy.
Unless the VET sector’ s problems are addressed, a future inquiry into it could focus on safety breaches in the fields of aged care, early childhood, construction or security industries. This latest report drew attention to some possible scenarios that concern industry experts, such as poorly trained pharmacy assistants not advising customers about the ill-effects of misusing over-thecounter drugs.
“ The committee expresses deep concerns regarding the quality of training being undertaken by many students in the aged-care sector, and believes there is a real risk to public health and safety, particularly in such a vulnerable community, because of the low standards of training some RTOs are providing.
“ There is no reason to believe that these issues are confined to the aged care or early childhood sectors. In the course of the inquiry the committee has also heard evidence that these practices are rife in the construction and security industries.”
Not only is public safety at risk from poor training providers; the national economy is at risk. In their evidence to the Senate inquiry, the ACTU highlighted the substantial economic issues arising from members of the construction industry being insufficiently trained:
“ From a manufacturing point of view, and it is an area of particular interest, we worry deeply that the people who are building our bridges, our submarines … and our ships have the skills that are required to produce a product that is sustainable and that will drive the Australian economy.”
Now that the report is in the public domain, no policymaker or bureaucrat will be able to use, at any pink batts type of inquiry, the excuse that they didn’ t realise VET policy was leading to public safety issues or economic disruption.
DON’ T EXPECT ASQA TO TURN SUPERHERO A feature of the report is the number of recommendations that include the hope that ASQA can do much more to prevent rogue behaviour. Six of the 16 recommendations focus on ASQA being funded or encouraged to do more, including driving the fanciful blitz of all training providers. As another example of ASQA being asked to don a superhero’ s cape, one recommendation reads:
“ The committee recommends that the Australian Skills Quality Authority be given the powers to take swift and strong action against registered training organisations found to be providing inadequate training to their students.”
In another recommendation, the regulator is exhorted to be firm and fast in stamping out abuse:
“ The committee recommends that the underpinning legislation for the Australian Skills Quality Authority be revamped in order to give the regulator sufficient powers to adequately regulate the vocational education and training sector, to protect the rights of students and to act more firmly and quickly to stamp out abuse.”
However, lest readers of the report get too excited about a revamped ASQA swooping down from great heights on rogue providers, remember, the Coalition senators believe the government has already set in train sufficient reforms to solve VET’ s problems, including more funding and sufficient powers for ASQA. Their minority report expresses the view that the“ government’ s [ previously announced ] reforms address all of these issues to protect students, taxpayers and the reputation of the sector”.
Further,“ the government has already: introduced tough new standards for registered training organisations, committed more funding to the Australian Skills Quality Authority( ASQA) to implement the new standards, and introduced new laws which enable regulators to act more swiftly when addressing quality concerns”.
So while the current government remains in power, ASQA won’ t be asked to don a superhero’ s cape any time soon. There will be no blitz, just a ramping up of the current legislative and regulatory activities.
Readers of the report, don’ t be alarmed by the evidence cited in its first 4½ chapters, the government has it all in hand. ■
Dr John Mitchell is a VET researcher and analyst. Go to jma. com. au
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