150,000 new students enrolled on fee-free TAFE courses, new figures show
Anthony Albanese hailed the statistics, claiming ‘Australia is better off’ for the scheme, which hopes to address the nation’s critical skills shortages by funding students in vocational training.
More than 150,000 people enrolled in Labor’s signature fee-free TAFE courses in the first half of 2024, new figures show.
Anthony Albanese hailed the statistics, claiming “Australia is better off” for the scheme, which hopes to address the nation’s critical skills shortages by funding students in vocational training.
Since the policy was launched in January 2023 to June this year, some 508,889 students had signed up to the courses, which include childcare, nursing, aged care and education.
Official figures show enrolments in the care sector increased by 7.8 per cent this year compared with the first half of 2023, which the government claims is a result of increased wages.
The Prime Minister said: “We need to train Australians for the jobs of today as well as the jobs of tomorrow.
“With a historic number of people enrolling in care and early education-related courses, it is showing that our wage increases for early childhood education and aged-care workers are incentivising more young Australians to move into the sector.
“This means there will be more aged-care workers, more childcare workers, and more Australians with the skills that they need, but also the skills that our economy needs.”
Data released earlier this year showed the fee-free courses had failed to drive a major increase in the total number of government-funded students in vocational training, with only a 1.7 per cent total rise, despite the 355,000 enrolling in the flagship scheme in 2023.
The figures suggested the government was covering the costs of courses for students who were already enrolled.
Skills and Training Minister Andrew Giles dismissed the concerns, praising the scheme as an “enormous success”.
He said of the recent statistics: “We are reforming vocational education and training to make it fairer and easier to access. It’s great to see so many students from under-represented backgrounds getting the opportunities they deserve.
“We want all Australians to have access to our world-class tertiary education sectors.
“The previous government was defined by nearly a decade of dysfunction and mismanagement, and nowhere was this more evident than in the VET sector.”
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