TAFE caught in web of contradictions

When anyone challenges the state government on the recent increases to costs to TAFE students, it busily denies responsibility.

A recent statement from the Minister on ABC News asserted that TAFE was in fact free to charge whatever it wanted as user fees. With this sort of statement the government would have us believe that it has had no part to play in the current state of affairs.

In fact, the Newman government has been most active in placing TAFE in its current position. The convening of a Skills and Training Taskforce was one of the key 100-days-of-government actions that the LNP pledged on achieving power. It was a handpicked body, membership of which ignored community representation. In its findings, it focused on “big business” needs and emphasised the separation of TAFE from the department and the removal of any community service obligations from TAFE. The Costello Audit set the scene for the dislocation of TAFE and its assets.

Subsequent legislation has created:

• TAFE as a commercially oriented stand-alone organisation 
• the Queensland Training Asset Management Authority, a commercially oriented property management body to lease or dispose of previously TAFE-owned assets.

Additionally, the Minister is responsible for the development of a funding model which dislocates the dollar amount paid as subsidy from the actual duration of study. Every class taught in TAFE has a duration of study or a volume of learning. It is an indicator of the amount of engagement that is required to ensure that students understand the underpinning information and learn to execute the skills suitably. The current funding model ignores this concept in favour of a system which generalises and averages the training subsidy. A 15-hour unit is paid for at the same rate as a 100-hour unit, and is only paid on completion of the study. This is meant to be an incentive for the delivering organisation to encourage completion by the student.

TAFE institutes have worked for many years to bring down the cost of providing skills and knowledge to students. The reality of vocational education is that in many instances within TAFE there are students who require concentrated support, sometimes one-on-one contact with a teacher. Literacy and numeracy problems mean that the average TAFE student may require support that certainly goes beyond delivery of courses in the online environment. One corner of the foundation of TAFE’s reputation for quality delivery is traced back to small classes, individual attention and supportive mechanisms in the learning environment.

These very values and services are undermined by the state government’s short sighted approach to vocational education and training, as well as its myopic view that vocational training should be purely about direct employment outcomes. For many students, TAFE has provided a second chance at education, leading to subsequent study in different areas from that covered by their initial course of study. That has then led to university qualifications and even better employment outcomes. The current government’s funding structure limits this sort of opportunity and defers the cost for anything beyond an initial qualification at the Cert 3 level for the individual to pay.

Far from being able to “charge what it likes”, TAFE is caught in a web of often contradictory policy and legislation spun by the ideologically one-eyed.

David Terauds
TAFE Organiser

Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 119 No 7, 3 October 2014, p21