Marist Brothers Darlinghurst Opinions |
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Hon Malcolm Turnbull
PO Box 545 Edgecliff NSW 2027
Trade courses should only be taught at TAFE: end the multi-million
dollar rip-offs. This will stop
private providers ripping off young people and dumbing down trade
courses while ensuring Australia’s high standards in our skilled
workforce are maintained. Properly qualified tradespeople are also
guardians of public safety.
For a young person deciding to do a
certificate III course, it will be one of the most critical decisions
they will have to make, compounded
by the fact they have
to choose between one of 400 for-profit Private
Providers (PP) or TAFE. If they choose a for-profit private provider
over TAFE, they face the serious risk their PP qualification will be
dismissed as inferior to the qualification from TAFE.
Even worse the PP could go bankrupt resulting in the student
frantically looking elsewhere to complete their course.
Attachment
A: Results of making TAFE the only Vocational Training Provider
in Australia
running Certificate III
courses and
Attachment B: -
Listing
of some of the Private Providers.
Tony Morrissey
BSc (ENG) UNSW, SMIEEE,
MIE AUST CPENG Chifley NSW
Attachment
A
·
The target
Council of Australia Governments (COAG) that 50 % of Australian
population will have a certificate III or higher by 2020 will be met.
Presently it is only 34% compared to Germany’s 80%
·
This will
also prevent colleges in the region closing thus ensuring apprentices do
not have to travel over 100km to do their training. Another valuable
benefit is that the Literacy and Numeracy courses which have been
slashed, can be continued.
·
The public
will have confidence that when they engage a plumber, electrician,
builder motor mechanic, or other tradespeople, their services will be of
a high and safe standard.
Listing of some of the Private Providers
Dear Premier
Our home-grown
Third World tradies: a national shame.
You may be relieved to know that this
will be the last time I will be bombarding you about the TAFE tragedy
and the shonky private providers preying on its dying carcass. During
the last 24 months I have been writing letters and sending emails to the
electronic media; newspapers and politicians on both side of the
political fence to very little response. I feel like Saint John the
Baptist crying in the wilderness: he lost his head, while I can’t even
get a headline.
From the practically zero response I am
getting, it is apparent that hardly anyone gives a stuff that our trades
training is slipping to Third World levels. And no one cares that just
about anybody can now pay a private provider $10,000 to get an
electrical contractor license. One provider even has the scandalous gall
to say there is no need to attend lectures as it can all be done on
line. Now there’s a tragic epitaph for the first “under-trained” sparky
who will almost certainly be killed on the job.
I have attached copies of letters I have
sent to the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, Opposition Leader Bill
Shorten and to the toothless watchdog ASQA; as well a report from a head
teacher on how TAFE NSW should be restructured.
I have summarized the main points in
various letters and emails below:
Going back to the state governments of
the 1960s and even earlier in the 1880s, politicians discovered the
importance of having a skilled workforce as the core of an educated
society and enable it to reach its full potential. This was essential
for building a new industrialised nation using the latest technologies
and skill sets.
So TAFE was set-up to provide an
affordable public education
throughout NSW for the young and disadvantaged, as well
as providing a ‘second chance’ for Australians hungry for new skills in
our fast developing industrialised nation. A technological revolution
was underway and it needed the highly skilled workers TAFE was about to
provide. TAFE was not set up as a
not-for-profit all, or money-making organisation to compete against
shonky private providers as championed by Liberal State and Federal
Governments. The only “profit” intended by earlier governments was a
talent-bank for the entire country,
both
for corporations and citizens alike.
TAFE gave students quality training and education pathways into the work
force. It also provided language and literacy skills courses.
In order for the courses to be relevant
TAFE liaised with industry and commerce. This was crucial to TAFE and
Australia’s success.
It is quite clear that in the interest of
short term gain, the policy of the
O’Farrell and Baird governments has been aimed at destroying TAFE and
substituting it with private providers. This is dramatically shown by
the sacking of 5000 TAFE teachers; the proposed mass sell-off of 27 TAFE
colleges and vastly increasing TAFE student fees by offering
Commonwealth
VET HELP loans.
The new TAFE EBS $600 million computer system implemented in October
2014 is a complete failure and should revert back to the old system.
Prior to it being rolled out
TAFE staff analysed the system and found it to be only 30- 40% suitable.
Consequently in May 2016
thousands of TAFE students are still not
officially enrolled in their courses because of computer glitches.
What is even more disastrous is students cannot access
their results, especially if they did subjects at different TAFE
colleges. In short the computer system does not interact with other TAFE
colleges. Even the Auditor- General is having trouble trying to access
$477.4 million in TAFE course revenue.
What is even more ludicrous is that TAFE
NSW has been forced to pay consultants KPMG $5.86 million out of its
slashed budget to track down $477.4 million in course fees lost
somewhere in TAFE’s computer system (EBS),
For a young person deciding to do a
certificate III course ( trade course), it will be one of the most
critical decisions they will have to make, compounded
by the fact they have
to choose between one of 400 for-profit Private
Providers (PP) or TAFE. If they choose a for-profit private provider
over TAFE, they face the serious risk their PP qualification will be
dismissed as inferior to the qualification from TAFE.
Even worse the PP could go bankrupt resulting in the student
frantically looking elsewhere to complete their course.
The industry watchdog on the providers is
the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) which is toothless and
totally incompetent when cracking down on shonky private providers. It
is imperative that all trade training (certificate III) should only be
run at TAFE colleges before a tragedy occurs. Table below identifies
some of these shonky private providers.
To
relieve this pressure from young people and to ensure the high standard
of Australian tradespeople is maintained, all Certificate III course
(Trade Courses) should only be run by TAFE colleges nationwide.
Consequently the public will have confidence that when they
engage a plumber, electrician, builder motor mechanic, or other
tradespeople, their services will be of a high and safe standard.
Finally for TAFE to be an efficient and
cost-effective organization, the current 10 institute model should be
abandoned and replaced by a single body as it was in the 1960s and
called TAFE NSW. This will
dramatically reduce overheads and internal negativity by a
simplifying systems.
Tony Morrissey
BSc (ENG) UNSW,
SMIEEE, MIE AUST CPENG
.
The table below lists the private providers in the top 10 in 2014 who
have attracted media or regulatory attention, the amount of VFH money
they received, and amount they received per student who graduated.
(Source: Senate Committee: Education and Employment Q on N
No.AQ15-000668)
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