Victoria’s TAFE Quandary: Need To Analyse Training System

Yesterday Ally Moore’s 774 morning Talk Show covered a wide range of opinions on Victoria’s TAFE system, given its significant loss of funding and the possible loss of 2000 teachers. The views of John Buchanan, director of the Workplace Research Centre at the University of Sydney, I believe should also be added into the mix.

Ally’s discussion with listeners covered a lot of ground – both good and bad opinions of TAFE training – but John’s view is that other states need to learn from Victoria’s deep VET (Vocational Education and Training) troubles. He says:

“T.S.Eliot wrote; ‘Between the conception and the creation…falls the shadow’. In the case of Victoria, it is a very long shadow between policy and practice. Yes, levels of training have increased. But this is price driven by entrepreneurs devising attractive propositions for poorly informed customers (students)…

John Stuart Mill once observed that under conditions of competition standards are set by the morally least reputable agent. This is the dynamic working its way through the Victorian vocational education and training system.”

About The National Training Entitlement

What the Commonwealth was seeking 2001-2011:

• The first ever guarantee for all Australians from post school to age pension age to have access to a government subsidised training place for a first certificate III qualification so that more Australians can participate in building a modern, advanced economy. Students can access the entitlement through any training provider approved by the relevant state or territory to deliver publicly subsidised training
• Students will also be able to access foundation skills training necessary to complete the certificate III qualification, such as language, literacy and numeracy training
• While student fees charged for study may be different in different jurisdictions, all states and territories will have appropriate concessions in place so that disadvantaged students do not face additional financial barriers to study
• Students who are clients of Job Services Australia and Disability Employment Services providers will pay the same fees as other students and will benefit from any relevant concessions applicable to them
• Students must meet the relevant entry criteria for the course, and must not already have a qualification at certificate III or higher
• Access to a particular course will be subject to the availability of training places in the relevant location

John says that training packages were meant to provide a base of expertise but unfortunately, in his opinion, they haven’t.

Training Packages – The Mandated Model Of Qualifications In VET

It seems that in Victoria, these training packages have provided neither a base for public vocational education and training and nor have they delivered a preference for public providers such as TAFE. Instead they have provided a base/framework for many qualifications that ‘fit the model’ and have been taken up by entrepreneurial suppliers responding to market demand.

Many of these courses are not well known amongst employers. John asks:

“What is an employer in the agricultural sector to think when their sector has more than 170 qualifications?”

What Should Other States Do To Avoid The ‘Victorian Disease’?

1. Have caps and incentives associated with access to entitlements so that limits are placed on the growth in courses where there is limited market demand.

Provide extra support to students contemplating courses where there is pressing labour market demand. South Australia’s system does this.

2. There is a need to upgrade quality requirements among training providers and look at the quality of education and training ‘beyond desktop audits’.

3. There is a need to think carefully about how markets operate…The problem of ‘thin markets’ requires government intervention to ensure workforce development and social infrastructure is established and maintained – a matter of maintaining coherent workforce development and social capital.

4. There is a need for policymakers to be realistic…To flourish, a competitive economy doesn’t need a market in the production of qualifications; it needs institutions that can respond to changing requirements.

What’s Happening Overseas?

In the area of workforce development, some of the most successful economies – Singapore, Denmark and Norway – have nurtured ‘dynamic and innovative networks of producers, consumers and officials’, their principle being to deepen human capacity, not user choice, in a training market.

John finishes his article, ‘Standards Storm Brewing’, with another quote, from William Beveridge:

“The market is a good servant but a poor master.”

A worthwhile addition to the discussion on TAFE Victoria’s future