Nick G.
TAFE SA is under concerted attack.
It is a victim of the same right-wing neoliberal
pro-market and user-pays philosophies that have seen a reduction in services
and their quality in areas like health, transport, housing and school
education.
It is also a reflection of the contradiction between TAFE
as a provider of courses that reflect the interests and needs of a very diverse
Australian population, on the one hand, and as a provider to employers of a
workforce that meets their productivity requirements.
The question of “TAFE for whom?”- for the community or for corporations - has
led to some big changes in TAFE operations because the corporations have the
ear of both major parliamentary parties.
They have the upper hand, and it is the initiatives and innovations that
serve their needs and their interests that have plunged TAFE into crisis.
The crisis has also exposed the utter irrelevance of
parliament.
On November 24, 2011 Dr Bob Such, a former TAFE lecturer
and Minister in a Liberal state government for Technical and Further Education,
moved the following motion in the House of Assembly of the SA Parliament:
That
this house calls on the state government to ensure that TAFE is not undermined
by the introduction of full contestability for VET funding, nor by the South
Australian government’s Skills for All policy.
The motion was carried.
It was an important motion and was the culmination of
intensive lobbying by the AEU of state parliamentarians.
SA AEU members were aware of what was happening in
Victoria. And they had felt the breath
of the devil on the backs of their necks in March 2011 when the chief executive
of Business SA, Peter Vaughan, had savaged TAFE as a “sheltered workshop” for
teachers.
They were protected, he said, by the “dead hand of
bureaucracy” and by “inflexible” industrial awards.
His chief criticism of lecturers and teachers in the SA
TAFE was that they “failed to meet the needs of the business community in
filling skills shortages”.
He called for it to be made easier to sack permanent
teachers and for the removal of the cap on the numbers of casually-employed
staff. Industrial agreements should be
created for each area of expertise, he said, echoing John Howard’s AWAs.
Labor
sets up TAFE for corporate takeover
How did the state Labor government respond?
Minister for Employment, Training and Further Education
Jack Snelling said that by 2012-13 he "expected" TAFE would have to
compete openly against private training businesses and organisations.
"The Office for TAFE will have more autonomy and
flexibility to respond to the market and be competing for training
revenue."
This was heading in the direction of the Victorian model.
That is why Bob Such’s motion, eight months later, was so important.
That motion reflected the will of the people. It is what parliaments are supposed to do.
But there is a lesson in this for people who want to
confine struggles to defend public interests to the Labor Party and the
parliamentary process.
Despite the replacement of the Rann-Foley leadership of
the government with the ALP Left’s Jay Weatherill in October 2011, Vaughan’s
agenda for the commercialisation of TAFE proceeded apace.
Indeed, one year after Weatherill’s new team had been in
office, the SA parliament took TAFE out from under the control of the
government’s department and handed it over to the private sector. Further
Education Minister Kenyon proudly announced that TAFE would now be an
independent statutory corporation run by an independent Board. The Board’s inaugural Chair? Peter Vaughan!
Here are the other members of the Board:
Mr Rob
Chapman. Mr Chapmanis a former Managing Director of the State Bank of SA, and
was most recently the CEO of St George Bank. He has extensive experience as
Chairman of several high profile Boards.
He is a former President of Business SA. He is not an educator.
Ms Joanne
Denley. Ms Denley is currently the Director of Human Resources and Risk
Management at Bridgestone Australia a huge multinational corporation which she describes
as a “great global company”. She has a Master degree in Business
Administration. She is not an educator.
Ms Miriam
Silva. Ms Silva recently was General Manager of Commercial Operations at Elders
and is currently a member of the Training and Skills Commission. She has an Honours degree in Maths and is a
high profile Muslim. As both a woman and
a Muslim she has to be acknowledged for succeeding in a traditionally male and
very conservative sector of South Australian business. But she is not an educator.
Ms Noelene
Buddle. Ms Buddle is a private consultant and sits on a number of Boards
including WorkCover Corporation and the South Australian Museum. She has a BA in Accountancy and a Master in
Business Administration. She is a former general manager of Austereo. She is
not an educator.
Mr John
Branson. Mr Branson is currently the Chairman of Directors at Stuart Petroleum
and is a Director of AED Oil. He is not an educator.
Mr Adrian
Gerard Marron. Mr Marron is currently Chief Executive Officer of the Canberra
Institute of Technology and has over 15 years’ experience in the Tertiary
Education sector. He has experience as
an educational administrator.
Ms Annette
Hurley. Ms Hurley was most recently a Labor Senator for South Australia and
former Chair of the Senate Economics Committee.
She is not an educator.
Corporatised
TAFE losing market share
There is no doubt that the Skills for All agenda has opened
TAFE SA to competition by private training organisations for funding with the
same results as in Victoria and elsewhere.
Since the introduction of Skills for All, TAFE SA market
share has dropped by 6% from 75% to 69%.
However, the decline is much steeper in areas of high youth employment,
like the South of Adelaide, where the TAFE share has dropped by around 12%.
Currently there are around 300 Skills for All training
providers contesting funding that would once have supported TAFE courses. Many of these providers are based
interstate. Nationally, there are more
than 4000 private RTOs seeking to divert funding from TAFE to themselves.
To make it easier for RTOs to compete in the market place
with TAFE SA, the State government is planning to remove $30m in funding from
TAFE. This is to reduce the difference
in the payments that go from the State government toTAFE and the RTOs.
In relation to funding, it is important to realise that
both TAFE and RTOs are funded on course completion numbers, not on enrolment
numbers. TAFE SA has had instances
recently of two courses with 37 and 36 enrolments dropping over the space of
four weeks to 6 and 4 students respectively.
And courses are being “capped” – that is, once they reach a certain size
they are closed to further enrolments.
Fightback
sure to develop
TAFE SA supporters and staff will be sure to campaign
hard to protect TAFE from the ravages of the market.
They do not want to see lecturers laid off, courses
removed and fees increased.
But there can be no solutions in a system in which both
major parliamentary parties are committed to the neoliberal belief that
for-profit, private providers should be the beneficiaries of government
spending on education.
The defence of TAFE must be part of an independent
people’s agenda that leads not towards the bourgeois parliament, but towards
anti-imperialist independence and socialism.
Only such a system can allow the people to make their own
decisions about what a socially useful education system might look like.
They will be continually frustrated in those attempts
while the power of the state rests with capital.
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