Federal control will not cure TAFE's ills

If you blinked you may have missed quite an important development in the vocational education and training space recently.

Among a number of proposals emerging from the “Reform the Federation” process was a suggestion that the Commonwealth take on sole responsibility for funding the VET sector. The matter was discussed most seriously at the recent Council of Australian Governments meeting, with all parties agreeing to look at the idea.

It’s understandable you may not have noticed the development given, as one prominent observer quipped recently, watching the federation reform process is, for most people, less interesting than watching cow manure harden.

However, it is something which, if implemented, may have far-reaching implications for our Commonwealth’s expectations of this important but poorly understood education sector.

Greg Craven (he of the cow pat quip) is the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian Catholic University and a member of the expert panel for the White Paper on Reform of the Federation. In a 5 August opinion piece in The Australian, Craven identifies a number of key issues I personally would agree with.

• Vocational education is indispensible to our modern Australian polity.
• VET is a policy disaster driven by different state approaches to the issues and a reliance on private provision to provide a fix.
• The sector is infested with low-cost, cut-rate private provision and lack of consistency on course design and duration.
• TAFEs are the sadly neglected crown jewel of VET.
• TAFEs do the heavy lifting in the space, but it’s getting much harder for them to do it.
• We let this state of affairs continue at our nation’s peril.

His consequent conclusion, that “given the states have stuffed it all up it therefore must be given over to the feds,” is much harder for me to agree with.

Certainly, Pat Forward of the Australian Education Union disagrees, arguing that the federal government taking over the reins (especially, I would suggest, the current government) would entrench the market-driven policies that have brought the system to its current state of disrepair. The federal VET FEE HELP system is an example of the impact of such federal direction.

In a recent article (http://stoptafecuts.com.au/blog/commonwealth-takeover-vet-would-destroy-public-tafe-system/), Forward broadly agreed with Craven’s analysis, but not his conclusion. Citing the super profits of some private for-profit providers (making in excess of 30 per cent, while in some cases taking more than 95 per cent of their funding from government) Forward posits that such a “shift of responsibility for funding and organisation of the sector to the Commonwealth would be a triumph of market reforms and result in the complete privatisation of the sector, and of TAFE colleges” .

The ramifications of such a move may mean some states continuing to support their TAFE colleges, but in the context of a virtual de-funding of higher level diplomas and advanced diploma qualifications, with a shift to full “user-pays” with VET FEE HELP as the key source of funding for these qualifications.

Forward correctly identifies that there has been no publicly available analysis of the impact and ballooning growth of the federal VET FEE HELP scheme and the consequences for some of the most disadvantaged students in the Australian community. Full fees in VET are completely deregulated, with the only limit on fees charged being the $95,000 limit on the amount of money a student can borrow. Forcing this level of debt on to vulnerable students has enormous and profound implications for individuals, communities and regions – particularly if unnecessary and/or substandard qualifications are being delivered by shonky providers.

The current massive growth in student indebtedness, in a climate in which the quality and usefulness of VET qualifications is being called into question, must be considered in the debate.
Yes, the policy arena is a complete farmyard mess needing a wash down and re-fencing, but a careful analysis and public debate examining all consequences is essential, especially given the importance of TAFE to the community, as demonstrated by Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland in recent elections.

David Terauds
TAFE Organiser

Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 120 No 6, 21 August 2015, p20