TAFE teachers claim offshore workers botched writing of course programs

TAFE teachers claim an attempt to offshore the writing of course documents for students has backfired.

Foreign workers have botched the creation of updated TAFE course materials after the government spent millions of dollars outsourcing the job to external consultants, according to employees currently working at the organisation.

The move to outsource the work normally done by TAFE teachers with current industry experience comes after it was revealed in November 261 courses would not be updated in time for 2022 classes to comply with Australian Skills Quality Authority guidelines.

The following month, TAFE boss Steffen Faurby left the organisation just two years into his five year contract and the organisation gave out $9.9 million to Ernst and Young and $6.6 million to Deloitte to rewrite course program, assessments and workbooks.

TAFE teachers say offshore workers have botched course materials. Picture: Dylan Robinson

The Daily Telegraph can reveal at least part of that work outsourced to Ernst and Young was then sent to a company called InfoPro Learning to write course programs.

InfoPro’s website says it will “transform human capital by creating engaging learning experiences that solve the most challenging business problems” and it has offices in New Deli, Denmark and New Jersey but does not have a branch in Australia.

One TAFE employee said: “They said the training package would be produced by Ernst and Young, they said they needed subject matter experts to shape the assessments, the workbooks and all the materials they were creating.”

“We tried to help as a subject matter expert, but they are so disorganised, the people I had to explain the basics of the industry and teach them, and give them material to create the learning materials for us.”

“These people were trying to work out the Australian Industry Standards, laws and regulations, trying to come up with something, some kind of assessment … They have no idea about the TAFE student profile … they just copied and pasted the learning outcomes from the (Training.gov) website.”

Another employee said other people who had been writing training documents from Australia were also not subject matter experts but were “googling” to figure things out.

“They are paying out all this money to Deloitte and Ernst and Young, we offered to give them all our documentation. It is a training package update, there are only small changes but they said they don’t want it. They want to do it themselves because they get paid $700 an hour.”

Opposition TAFE spokesman Tim Crakanthorp dubbed the move unacceptable and said the government must stop attempting to outsource lessons.

“We have trains, ferries, trams, buses and now education being offshored by this Government. They have no shame and clearly will not stop until there is nothing left to produce locally,” he said.

“The Government must draw a line in the sand and restore the people, the funding and the quality to TAFE so it can shine like we know that it used to.”

A TAFE NSW Spokeswoman did not deny the work had been outsourced but said it was of a “high standard”

“While some professional services providers may draw upon their global capacity to meet contract requirements in respect of some of the 250 courses, all training and assessment materials used by TAFE NSW undergo stringent quality controls,” she said.

She said the work was outsourced to consultants because the work to update training packages was “unprecedented”.

“In planning for this increased demand, and in the interests of students, TAFE NSW brought in additional short-term resources to scale up its development of training and assessment materials,” she said.

Originally published as TAFE teachers claim offshore workers botched writing of course programs