Sweeping skills overhaul to target rorting providers failing students to boost rates of trainees getting qualified and plug worker crisis

A sweeping skills overhaul which will target rorting providers failing SA students will aim to lift poor completion rates.

Tradie students Elizabeth Briggs, 20, and Ray Kyle, 35, at TAFE SA’s Tonsley campus in Adelaide’s south. Picture: Ben Clark

South Australian vocational educators risk losing taxpayer funding if students fail to finish training courses, under sweeping reforms to crackdown on rorting and lift poor completion rates.

In the biggest overhaul in more than a decade, the state government will on Monday unveil a new skills policy to urgently plug a ballooning statewide shortage crisis and boost investment.

Official figures show fewer than half of SA trainees, or apprentices, complete courses while the number of occupations facing worker shortages has more than doubled in three years.

Cert 3 students Elizabeth Briggs, 20 and Ray Kyle, 35 at the Tensely TAFE SA. Picture: Ben Clark

The reforms, developed with union, industry, students and company feedback, will crack down on provider “integrity” or rorting, student support along with poor treatment of apprentices who then drop out.

TAFE SA will develop better curriculum and students “funnelled” into the right courses as employers and unions are forced to “actively engage”.

The policy, which ministers said was the first in more than 10 years, will prioritise training in areas such as construction, early childhood education, healthcare, defence, and hi-tech industries including cyber or IT.

Figures show more than 200,000 students undertake a VET course in SA, almost a third of whom taxpayers fund.

Authorities will boost taxpayer efforts to improve the 48.8 per cent rate of students gaining a qualification and plug 351 occupation shortages.

In 2021, 149 industries suffered shortages.

Elizabeth Briggs and Ray Kyle, love their studies. Picture: Ben Clark

Benchmarks will be developed to measure “system improvements” to gauge if firms should have funding stripped.

Labor is critical of Liberal administrations having “focused disproportionately” on TAFE SA and private traineeships in retail, business and management courses.

“The constant push … for students to attend university, rather than pursuing highly valuable

vocational pathways have negatively impacted the reputation and perceived value of VET,” concluded a 41-page strategy report, titled “Skilled. Thriving. Connected”.

Education Minister, Blair Boyer, said SA’s “persistent skills shortages”, hurt industry and the wider community.

The new policy, he said, would help students secure well-paid jobs.

“Ensuring students actually finish their course, makes sure every cent invested in skills delivers the best outcomes for the economy,” he said.

“(We’re) taking strong action against any unscrupulous behaviour, having a strong public provider, and ensuring all parts of the training system are working together to deliver the skilled workforce our state needs.

“We are leaving no stone unturned in tackling skills shortages.”

Opposition spokesman, former Liberal Education Minister John Gardner, said the non-government training sector has been “hit hard” as training numbers plummet after the Liberals’ 2018 “Skilling SA” strategy was “tremendously successful”.

“We left Labor with a restored TAFE SA, a flourishing skills sector, and growing numbers of young people seeking traineeships and apprenticeships,” he said.

“Labor’s got nothing to be proud of so far and their attempts to wipe the slate clean now are impressing nobody.”

Cert 3 student Ray Kyle, 35 at the Tensely TAFE SA. Picture: Ben Clark

Mr Boyer said the numbers did not support Mr Gardner’s “rose-coloured recollections”, which included a drop in funded TAFE enrolments and a failure to negotiate a national skills funding deal.

Elizabeth Briggs, 20, of Victor Harbor, became an apprentice bricklayer after working in the “hit and miss” fitness world.

She now works full time in Mt Barker while studying for a TAFE Certificate 3 in brick and block laying, which she has almost completed two years of.

“I don’t have to go to the gym after starting as it keeps me quite fit, which is a good thing, and I get to work outside,” she said.

SA Unions secretary Dale Beasley said: “Cracking down on training system rorting by stamping out dodgy provider behaviour’s long overdue.”

Australian Industry Group SA state head, Estha van der Linden, said her organisation “supports a training policy and system that is flexible and responsive”.

Originally published as Sweeping skills overhaul to target rorting providers failing students to boost rates of trainees getting qualified and plug worker crisis