Qld skills report recommends orderly transition to VET market
The Queensland Skills and Training Taskforce, established in June to advise the government on reform of the VET sector, has published an interim report dealing specifically with the Queensland TAFE sector. In contrast to the Victorian model, the Taskforce recommends a measured and orderly transition to more market oriented VET delivery and funding. It’s not without controversy: it recommends a radical overhaul of industrial arrangements, which draw the ire of unions, and the closure of 44 of the state’s 82 TAFE campuses, which will create some community anxiety and has already been criticised by the Commonwealth minister.
The report says the TAFE sector is hamstrung by archaic industrial relations agreements, underutilised infrastructure, high costs and low productivity:
TAFE institutes are at best at the margins of viability, with future expectations that planned increased contestability in the marketplace, along with strong competition from the private sector will see a need for greater levels of efficiency and effectiveness.
Key recommendations include:
- The establishment of a Queensland TAFE “parent entity, as a statutory authority, incorporating the 13 public TAFEs.
- A rationalisation of the TAFE system, involving mergers, to create 7 regional TAFE institutes (including metro, SkillsTec and Central Queensland, subject to the creation of CQU and CQIT as a dual sector institution) and the closure of a number of campuses.
- New industrial relations arrangements.
- Adequate funding be provided to support the agreed transition of TAFE Queensland to a competitive entity within VET and it be quarantined for a predetermined period, separate to any non-contestable base funding and fully contestable government funding for delivery of VET.
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Student numbers surge
University enrolments snowballed by 25% between 2006 and 2011, according to an analysis of last year’s census data. The overall population grew by just 8% during this period. The explosive growth exceeded the 17% increase experienced between 1991 and 1996, not long after then education minister John Dawkins opened up the university system in 1989.
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TEQSA stands its ground
TEQSA Chief Commissioner Carol Nicoll has rejected inferences coming out of the Go8 that universities are so low in risk they should be all but unregulated. There is “not necessarily an equivalence” between self-accrediting status and low risk.and that TEQSA has already raised “issues” with some unnamed universities since regulation began in January.
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Laureate delays Torrens Uni
The US-based Laureate International Universities has announced a delay in the opening of it’s Adelaide’s university, 
approved by the State government earlier this year, until at least 2014.
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Why the Vic VET reform model is dopey…
The Victorian situation is “a classic example of where the simplified textbook model of a market economy head butts up against a real world. It reflects very poorly on the quality of advice coming out of the state economic agencies, because they are the architects; they are the ones who provide the rationale for this public policy.”
In future, when the public policy textbooks are written, this policy and these people will be held up to ridicule.
…and why it sent the system bust
One private provider in Victoria delivered 19,780 hours of training in 2010 and it would have received about $106,614 in 
public funding for doing so. In 2011, this same provider delivered 1,238,212 hours of training and would have received about $6,673,963 in public funding for doing so. This is an increase of 6160% in public funding in one year. The provider will lose some of this because of the Victorian government’s recent funding cuts, but providing it sustains enrolments at the same level, it will still make millions of dollars. This provider is not breaking the rules.
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