TAFE changes a 'face-saving measure'

CRITICS have slammed the Victorian government's latest TAFE changes as an inadequate attempt to save face.

Denis Napthine

UNIONS, academics and the federal government have slammed the Victorian government's latest TAFE changes as an inadequate attempt to save face.

Premier Denis Napthine said the reforms, based on a report from an independent panel, included an extra $200 million over four years “to support innovation and structural reform”.

They also give TAFEs title of their assets, reduce red tape – particularly for the TAFE arms of the four dual-sector universities – and allow TAFEs to register themselves as group training organisations.

Skills Minister Peter Hall said the report sharpened the government’s role as TAFEs’ owner.

“It focuses on what is necessary to deliver stronger regional presence and support, and create a more competitive and autonomous TAFE sector,” he wrote in a foreword to a government publication, prepared two months ago.

“While education continues to be the core business of TAFE institutes, they need to become more commercially focused.”

The Australian Education Union said the government was trying to make TAFEs emulate the private colleges that now dominated Victorian training provision following previous reforms.

“The rhetoric is around increased competition, [despite] an acceptance that a huge shift in the market has already occurred,” said national TAFE secretary Pat Forward.

“Everything TAFEs are supposed to be doing is based on the notion that they need to focus on market contestability, rather than quality or social responsibility.”

The National Tertiary Education Union said the extra $50m a year was “sugar coating for a bitter pill”.

Victorian secretary Colin Long said the money wouldn’t make up for a $290m cut in last May’s state budget. He said TAFEs would end up selling off their assets to survive.

“It means, for instance, that Swinburne University of Technology would be free to sell its Prahran and Lilydale campuses,” Dr Long said.

“These are public assets built up over generations. Once they’re gone it’s almost impossible to get them back.”

The federal government said the new allocation wouldn’t restore budget cuts that had led to campus closures, staff redundancies and increased course fees.

“On face value this simply does not add up and we will be looking more closely at this,” said a spokesman for Tertiary Education Minister Chris Bowen.

Victorian TAFE Association executive director David Williams said the $200m wouldn’t replace the funds lost last year. “It’s different money for a different purpose.

“It’s nothing to do with the operation and governance cost of being a public provider. It’s nothing to do with community service obligations.”

University of Melbourne tertiary education researcher Leesa Wheelahan said the panel was attempting to “redefine TAFE” by watering down its social obligations.

Dr Wheelahan said she supported measures to give TAFEs greater independence and flexibility. “But when they’re not restoring the funding they’ve taken, particularly from the community service obligations, it’s changing the nature of the TAFE system in a far-reaching way.”

The government rejected the panel’s proposal to merge eight regional institutes into four in the Hume, Gippsland, south-west and north-west areas. Dr Wheelahan said this was a political decision.

“In regional areas, the local communities are fiercely protective of their TAFEs,” she said.

“That would be part of any government reluctance to support mergers, in terms of pressure on local members.”