Evans damns TAFE cuts

17/12/2012 By
Chris Evans

Commonwealth Newsroom    |    12 December 2012 Commonwealth minister for skills Chris Evans has met with New South Wales TAFE teachers who are facing the sack as a result of the O'Farrell State Government's cuts to TAFE.  More than 800 jobs will be axed as a result of the NSW government's decision to cut TAFE funding, slash jobs and increase student fees. On top of these staff cuts, NSW TAFE students face fee increases in 2013.  Evans said the loss of TAFE teachers and increased fees  across the state will mean reduced access to skills and training for people in NSW. At the very time we need to grow Australia's skills base, the NSW Liberal State Government is implementing … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Budget, Coalition policies, Commonwealth policies, TAFE, Vocational education & training Tagged With: , , ,

Once was TAFE

11/12/2012 By
budget-cuts-23

 _________________________________________ The first in our series on the year in Australian tertiary education and training, as recorded in the pages of The Scan. __________________________________________ The apparent end of the world arrived for the Victorian TAFE sector about 8 months earlier than the scheduled date of 21 December. On 28 April, the Victorian government pre-announced, through The Australian, swingeing cuts to TAFE funding, which essentially removed any special funding for TAFE as the public provider of vocational education and training in Victoria.  It was gobsmacking stuff, as reflected in The Scan’s first comment – indeed, the first published comment … [Read more...]

Filed Under: COAG, Coalition policies, Commonwealth policies, Commonwealth-State relations, TAFE, TAFE Directors Australia, Victorian TAFE Association, Vocational education & training Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

NSW TAFE cuts stand despite $1bn windfall

04/12/2012 By
NSW TAFE

The Australian    |    4 December 2012 The NSW government won’t back down from its $1.7 billion education cuts, including $800 million from TAFEs, despite revelations that the state is more than $1bn better off than it realised.  In October NSW auditor-general Peter Achterstraat’s audit uncovered 37 errors in the state’s financial accounts, suggesting a reported $340m deficit was really a $680m surplus. Treasurer Mike Baird last week insisted the September education cuts, blamed on reduced GST revenue, had been justified.  He told NSW parliament supplementary budget estimates hearing that the budget was still in deficit and, while he wouldn’t reveal the 37 errors, he … [Read more...]

Filed Under: TAFE, Vocational education & training Tagged With: , , , ,

States ‘on notice’ over TAFE cuts

26/11/2012 By
Chris Evans

The Australian    |    26 November 2012 In response to a series of questions, tertiary education minister Chris Evans has told the Senate that the states are “on notice” that they could miss out on $1.75 billion in reward funding negotiated in April.  Evans says three states are “ripping money out of training systems”.: Victoria’s taken $300 million out of the TAFE system.  The Queensland government is threatening to close half the TAFEs, and the NSW government is sacking 800 TAFE teachers. We’re making it very clear that we will not be allowing the states to get away with this. We will hold them to their promises about maintaining the training effort. Funding … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Budget, COAG, Commonwealth policies, Commonwealth-State relations, TAFE, Vocational education & training Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Regulators monitoring VET funding cuts

26/10/2012 By
regulatory-jigsaw

The Australian    |      26 October 2012 TEQSA chief commissioner Carol Nicoll has told a Senate estimates committee the higher education regulator has written to its 173 providers asking to be notified of any financial impacts from cuts to state vocational training budgets. She told the committee that skills funding cuts could have “consequential impact” on the quality of higher education at dual-sector universities and multi-sector private institutions. I reminded all CEOs and vice-chancellors that if they felt the impact … would threaten in any way their capacity to meet the threshold standards, they had a responsibility to notify TEQSA,  We are concerned about any … [Read more...]

Filed Under: ASQA, Budget, Coalition policies, Commonwealth policies, Commonwealth-State relations, Higher education policy, Quality audits, TAFE, universities, Vocational education & training Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

NSW VET market – smart & skilled?

25/10/2012 By
Sydney Institute

The Australian    |    24 October 2012 Under the NSW state government’s long awaited response to last year’s ‘Smart and skilled’ discussion paper,  NSW TAFEs will compete with private Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) for the right to offer courses up to certificate III level. Their revenue will depend on their ability to attract students, who will be able to take their business to any state government-approved provider under the ‘training entitlement’ model signed off by the Council of Australian Governments in April. NSW has been at pains to differentiate its model from Victoria’s open training market, where snowballing enrolments at private colleges … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Budget, TAFE, Vocational education & training Tagged With: , , , ,

AEU slams NSW VET market initiative

24/10/2012 By
Pat Forward

Investing in Quality   |    23 October 2012 The AEU has slammed NSW VET market reforms as repeating “the same failed experiment in market reform of its TAFE system which has led to the decimation of TAFE institutes in Victoria.” AEU national TAFE secretary Pat Forward says: Reforms announced in NSW …mean that students in NSW will be offered an “entitlement” to VET training for qualifications up to certificate 3 – but only for the first qualification.  This means that students in NSW may now only get one chance to study at TAFE in these courses, after which they will be required to pay full fees – often thousands of dollars – for any qualifications up to this … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Budget, TAFE Tagged With: , , , ,

Sydney TAFE courses & jobs on the block

19/10/2012 By
Sydney Institute

The Australian    |    19 October 2012 At least 95 jobs could go and training could be slashed from Australia's oldest vocational college, as NSW replicates Victoria's wholesale cuts to TAFEs.  Confidential proposals at Sydney Institute would see courses deleted or rationalised as Australia’s biggest TAFE reins in costs in response to private competition, state budget cuts and further anticipated market reforms. A document marked “cabinet in confidence” proposes cuts to automotive, business, accounting, retail, fine arts and pre-tertiary training, with courses scrapped from up to four of the institute’s eight campuses. At least four courses could completely … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Budget, TAFE Tagged With: , , ,

From unease to alarm: the flawed process of VET “reform”

18/10/2012 By
TAFE image

John Mitchell Associates     |     18 October 2012 To inform future policy decisions about VET,  education and training consultant John Mitchell has collated 22 of the articles he has written for Campus Review over the last year, on the concerns raised by ‘VET reform’ and the cutbacks to TAFE.   Many of the articles examine, either directly or indirectly, three pillars of the model of VET reform, particularly: ‘market design’, that is the proposition that an effective market for vocational education and training (VET) can be designed and implemented government officials, while still meeting industry skill needs ‘student entitlement’, that is providing eligible … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Coalition policies, TAFE, Vocational education & training Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Invest in TAFE blog

11/10/2012 By
TAFE invest logo

11 October 2012 With TAFE struggling across the country with budget cuts and the impact of "marketisation", the Invest in Quality, Invest in TAFE campaign has established a blog site  to encourage those interested in what is happening to TAFE around the country to contribute to the debate and discussion.  The first post surveys the state of the sector. Three states – Victoria, NSW and Queensland – are feeling the impact of savage state government budget cuts to TAFE budgets, with the combined effect of a shift to full competition for funding combining with the state government budget cuts in Victoria to place TAFE in that state on the brink of disaster. In Victoria on 13 … [Read more...]

Filed Under: AEU, National Tertiary Education Union, TAFE, Vocational education & training Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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