Nick G.
The crisis in South Australia’s TAFE system is a direct
result of the public provider having been handed to the corporate sector by the
State Labor government.
The Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) conducted a random
audit that found 16 courses had failed to meet the required standards. The ASQA
audit was commissioned by the government following the failure of an internal
TAFE SA audit to identify problems with the provider.
The crisis means that 800 students who have completed
courses will need to be retrained, along with 2500 currently enrolled, to meet
industry standards, and hundreds more wanting to enrol in 14 of the 16 courses
will be unable to do so until problems are resolved.
Labor throws TAFE SA
to the wolves
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 Australian Education Union (AEU) in SA of state
parliamentarians.
The AEU had seen what was happening in Victoria. And it had felt the breath of the devil on
the back of its neck 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 TAFE SA 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.
How did the state Labor government respond?
The Minister for Employment, Training and Further Education (DFEEST)
at the time, 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."
TAFE SA was heading towards the Victorian model - and this
was 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 SA proceeded apace.
Indeed, one year after Weatherill’s new team had been in
office, the SA parliament took TAFE SA out from under the control of DFEEST and
handed it over to the private sector. The Further Education Minister at that
time, Tom Kenyon, proudly announced that TAFE SA 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 inaugural Board:
·
Mr Rob Chapman. Mr Chapman is 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 decribes 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 broadcaster 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.
Five years on, only two of the original Board have left: the
educator, Adrian Marron and Rob Chapman.
There are three new members: the Labor-safe author and newspaper
columnist Susan Mitchell, ALP member and Timber Workers and CFMEU official
Trevor Smith, and tertiary education consultant Virginia Simmons.
The TAFE SA
basket-case
Current SA Education Minister Susan Close has responded to
the ASQA audit by sacking Peter Vaughan and accepting the resignation of the
TAFE SA CEO Robin Murt. It is good to
see Vaughan go in disgrace, but he should never have been appointed in the
first place. And changing the captain of
a floundering ship is no answer: the failed corporatisation of TAFE SA should
be entirely rescinded and the public provider brought back into a government
department.
TAFE SA has been reduced to a basket case at the hands of
the big end of town. It proves beyond
doubt that a large educational and training organisation cannot be run like a
corporation.
This is what TAFE SA is now, thanks to the Board:
·
One third of TAFE SA’s jobs (about 500 jobs)
will be slashed by 2018. They’ve already lost 400 jobs over the last three
years. Funding is being slashed by $94 million.
·
One third of enrolments are now full fee-paying
places. By 2019, the aim is to make half of the 80,000 students full fee
payers, thereby heaping debt on the shoulders of those struggling to climb the
ladder of opportunity.
·
the number of TAFE courses receiving State
Government subsidies was cut from 900 to 700 in 2016. Some of the terminated
courses were re-offered as online full-fee short subjects.
·
Applications for enrolment have declined year
after year since corporatisation by around 6% p.a.
·
Robin Murt told a parliamentary committee
hearing in 2015 the possibility that some campuses will be closed could not be
ruled out.
The Labor government belatedly (2015) awarded TAFE SA 90 per
cent of the subsidised places in new training courses under its WorkReady
policy, displeasing the private training providers, but leaving the
corporatised model intact.
Take TAFE SA back
from the corporates!
The AEU blames under-resourcing through South
Australia's Skills for All scheme for the widespread failure of TAFE SA to meet
national training standards. Just before his resignation, Murt denied this,
saying “funding is not a relevant factor in this issue”.
Funding, of course, is a major factor in the decline
of TAFE SA, but the reason it has become a basket case is the corporatisation
carried out by Labor. That model must
go. The state Government must accept the responsibility for guiding and funding
the public training provider.
Disband the Board of TAFE SA and stop the policy of
corporatisation!
Operate TAFE SA as a public good within the
appropriate state government department!
Increase TAFE SA funding and lift staff levels to
enable it to run efficiently!
Lift caps on enrolments in courses and reduce and abolish student
fees!
Ensure TAFE SA operates as a provider of courses that reflect the
interests and needs of a very diverse South Australian population, and not
merely as a provider to employers of a workforce that meets their productivity
requirements!
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