VET funding a “race to the bottom”, NSW skills minister says
TDA News | 14 December 2015
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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, state premiers and chief ministers have agreed to more closely review reforms and regulation, which had begun under the original COAG National Partnership Agreement on skills – initially created in April 2012 under Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
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The COAG meeting in Sydney on 11 December 2015 agreed that “further work will be undertaken on options to reform vocational education and training, for initial consideration at COAG’s first meeting in 2016, recognising that skills ministers will continue to work together to address key VET system challenges.”
Martin Riordan, Chief Executive of TDA said the recent meeting in Hobart of state and territory ministers with Minister for Vocational Education and Skills Luke Hartsuyker, had questioned the proposed transfer of responsibility for VET to the Commonwealth, with some ministers pointing to federal mismanagement of VET FEE-HELP loans, as an example of capacity problems under such a plan.
Riordan said:
The National Partnership Agreement on skills reform from 2012 has been a disaster. Industry and students have been hampered by waste on a scale not witnessed in the VET sector, and worse, matched almost exactly by the withdrawal of federal incentives to employers on apprenticeships and traineeships
It is pleasing that this COAG meeting has flagged a wider review of current VET policy, and how it is impacting industry and students.”
Training ministers for NSW and Victoria also signalled last week their dissatisfaction with current vocational education policy, and the need for changes.
NSW skills minister John Barilaro says the ongoing private college issue is hurting the economy because small businesses are not getting the skilled workforce they need.
He told the Council of Small Business Australia that billions of dollars had been wasted because of a lack of proper outcomes for small businesses and young people:
Let me just make it absolutely clear – what you hear about VET-FEE HELP is a problem the federal government created, not the state
If the feds actually copied the NSW state’s process when it comes to vocational education and training, we wouldn’t have had this problem.
We should be funding training on outcomes not on sign-ups and enrolments. It’s been a race to the bottom on enrolments under the VET-FEE HELP process.