The Australian | 6 October 2012
The Commonwealth government has endorsed the Northern Territory’s plan to roll out the new national training ‘entitlement’ and is providing an additional $18 million over the next 5 years to help fund it.
The funds are being allocated under the $1.75 billion National Partnership Agreement on Skills Reform, which was signed off by the Council of Australian Governments in April.
The national partnership is additional to regular federal funding of state and territory vocational training systems, which totals about $1.4bn a year. To qualify for the extra money, states and territories must submit plans detailing how they plan to implement the ‘entitlement’ places and other reforms including HECS-style loans for diplomas students.
The ‘entitlement’ guarantees government-subsidised training places up to certificate III level for all citizens without prior qualifications at that level.
The entitlement would initially be offered through Charles Darwin University and Batchelor Institute, which are both dual-sector institutions. Availability will then be extended through other “endorsed providers” which could include private colleges.
The NT will also continue to fund private colleges which train apprentices and trainees under the User Choice program. This effectively means that for the time being, the ‘entitlement’ will not be available at private colleges and will constitute no change from current practice, while User Choice won’t be available at public colleges.
All other jurisdictions apart from NSW have submitted implementation plans, with the ACT plan expected to be next to be endorsed.
Queensland and Tasmania have given some indications on how their entitlements will work, while Victoria and South Australia already exceed the federal government’s requirements by guaranteeing subsidised training places up to advanced diploma level.
However, questions persist over whether similar agreements will be struck with the big eastern states which have cut more than $450 million from their combined vocational training budgets this year.
The recently released NSW State Infrastructure Strategy, released this week, predicts that the country’s biggest TAFE network will languish as competition ramps up for a declining pool of government training funds.
TAFE demand is not expected to grow as vocational learning is increasingly provided by the private market. Increased contestability of funding for vocational training and flat student numbers over the past eight years suggests that TAFE enrolment numbers will be lower than population growth. Future TAFE reforms may significantly alter asset requirements.”
