Australian Education Union Submission Inquiry Into the Role Of

Australian Education Union Submission Inquiry into the role of Technical and Further Education system and its operation May 2013 Angelo Gavrielatos Australian Education Union Federal President Ground Floor, 120 Clarendon Street Southbank Vic 3006 Susan Hopgood PO Box 1158 Federal Secretary South Melbourne Vic 3205 Telephone: +61 (0)3 9693 1800 Facsimile: +61 (0)3 9693 1805 Web: www.aeufederal.org.au E-mail: [email protected] 2 Executive Summary The Australian Education Union (AEU) welcomes the opportunity to provide a written submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment Inquiry into the role of the technical and further education (TAFE) system and its operation. The AEU is an organisation of employees registered under the provisions of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009. It has approximately 190,000 members employed in government schools and public early childhood work locations, in public institutions of vocational and/or technical and further education and training, in Adult Multicultural or Migrant Education Service centres and in Disability Services centres as teachers, school leaders and education assistance or support work classifications. This is the first Federal Government inquiry into the TAFE system in Australia since the Kangan inquiry initiated in 1973 by the Whitlam government. The Kangan Report, released in 1974 is widely acknowledged as the foundation of the modern TAFE system. This House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment Inquiry into the role of the TAFE system and its operation comes at a crucial moment for TAFE in Australia. Whilst there is an emerging consensus amongst policy makers in Australia of the critical significance of a high quality and well resourced vocational education sector to the future prosperity of an equitable Australian society, the TAFE system is under sustained attack. The enormous pressure on TAFE comes as a combined result of sustained funding pressure from governments’ pre-occupation with competition as the major policy driver in the sector, and unprecedented budget cuts by state governments. Australia's internationally renowned TAFE system is the dominant provider of high quality vocational education, yet its potential in recent decades is being undermined by funding cuts and competition policies enacted by successive State, Territory and Commonwealth governments. It is becoming increasingly apparent that TAFE’s medium and long term survival is now at risk in many states and territories. While most policy makers acknowledge that TAFE needs to play a pivotal role in the emerging tertiary sector, it is increasingly apparent its institutional capability is being undermined, and its crucial role in creating positive social and economic futures for citizens of all ages and regions of the nation is being threatened. In this submission, the AEU will provide substantial evidence of the significant changes which have swept across the TAFE and VET system over the last two decades. These changes continue to have far reaching consequences for the capability and sustainability of the public TAFE system. The AEU submission will demonstrate that the Australian TAFE system – the pre- eminent public provider in the delivery of vocational education in Australia – has suffered significantly with declining government funding for VET, which has resulted in a 25.7% decrease in per student contact hour funding since 1997.1 The AEU has been arguing for more than two decades that unless State, Territory and Commonwealth governments seriously address this persistent underfunding and the arbitrary consequences of government policy to impose crude 'per-hour' efficiency measures on TAFE, the ongoing viability of TAFE will be threatened. 1 Long, M TAFE Funding and the Education Targets (an update), the Centre for the Economics of Education and Training (CEET), Monash University p. 1 1 The recent report of the Australian Workforce Productivity Agency, a report upon which the AEU will rely in its submission to demonstrate the persistent underfunding of the public VET system in Australia by all levels of government, provides further evidence of the comparative disparity between funding of the VET sector, and funding in the schools and university sector in Australia, and of the ongoing under-resourcing which has undermined TAFE. This submission will also provide evidence of how Commonwealth Government policies of increased competition for government funding in vocational education combined with an associated policy shift to increase the proportion of funds derived directly from students in vocational education have contributed to an unprecedented shift in market share away from TAFE and into newly established and untested private for-profit RTOs. When these policy settings combine with the decades-long obsession with “efficiency” dividends in VET, many public TAFE institutes have found themselves in increasingly difficult financial situations, particularly in the so-called “reform” state of Victoria. The AEU will argue that the 2012 National Agreement for Skills and Workforce Development (NASWD), which was signed by all states and territories, and the Commonwealth Government, cemented policies which have significantly damaged the public TAFE system, and accelerated the damaging trend of market share away from the trusted public sector TAFE, and towards a rapidly expanding private sector. This private VET sector is of untested and untried quality, and it operates in a policy setting which advantages fly-by-night, just-in-time provision of skills, rather than the established provision of high quality vocational education for which TAFE is known. While the settings of the 2012 NASWD saw all states and territories sign up for increased competition for funds and resources for the public TAFE system, and an increased emphasis and reliance on student contributions to resource the system, the Victorian Government had already by 2008 adopted most of the major policy settings in the 2012 NASWD. The AEU will show in its submission that by 2012, the Victorian VET “market” had shifted so dramatically that in only a few short years, TAFE had become a minority provider of vocational education – the first time in any state or territory in Australia’s history that TAFE’s share had fallen below that of its private competitors. Between 2008 and 2012, TAFE market share in Victoria fell from 75% to 44%, while at the same time private provider share grew from 14% to 46%2. Events in the Victorian VET market precipitated the current crisis in TAFE, and anticipated many of the events which have played out in other states and territories as governments have sought, unwisely, to attempt to follow the Victorian experiment. Unsurprisingly it seems to anyone except those in the Victorian VET bureaucracy, the VET budget “blew-out” as voracious, poorly regulated, private RTOs swamped the market, offering cheap, often “free” but worthless VET qualifications, often enticing students with free iPads, holidays or cash if they enrolled in qualifications. The Victorian Training Guarantee saw the VET budget in that state exceeded by more than $400m – the vast majority of this “overspend” going to private RTOs. In May, 2012, after several months of punitive budget “adjustments” to the TAFE sector, the Victorian government slashed a massive $300m from Victorian TAFE budgets, punishing the public provider for the blow-out in the VET budget, and precipitating an unprecedented crisis in TAFE. The AEU will present evidence in this submission that this budget cut to Victorian TAFE institutes has resulted in the loss of at least 2,400 jobs in the sector, the closure of many 2 Victorian Training Market Quarterly Report, Full Year 2012, Skills Victoria - Department of Education and early Childhood development, Melbourne 2 hundreds of TAFE courses, and the threatened and real closure of a number of TAFE campuses across the state. The private sector remained largely unscathed in the budget cuts, many of them simply able to shift their nascent delivery into other sectors, or to consolidate their offerings with other private providers. The AEU will show that state budget cuts to TAFE in Victoria were quickly followed by budget cuts to TAFE in NSW and Queensland, as these states and territories sought to position their own TAFE institutes to meet the conditions of the newly signed 2012 NASWD, and to “grow” the private sector in much the same way as the Victorian state government had done since 2008. In this submission, the AEU will contend that while state budget cuts to TAFE institutes in NSW, Queensland, Victoria and SA have been far reaching and are threatening not just the viability, but the very existence of TAFE in these four states, nevertheless the policy settings in the NASWD need serious reconsideration because they are contributing to a shift in the fundamental shape of the vocational education sector which is undermining of public provision. AEU Branch and Associated Body submissions are attached to this Federal AEU submission as Appendices 1-7. 1. Introduction TAFE changes lives. It is the backbone of trades training in this country. It enables adults to change careers. It caters for students who prefer an adult learning environment rather than school. It has a truly national footprint and plays a vital role in regional Australia. It does so much to build a love of learning and to boost national productivity.” (Julia Gillard - National TAFE Day Speech, October 28, 2009) In 1973, the Whitlam Government commissioned the Kangan inquiry into TAFE. Kangan created the vision upon which the modern TAFE system was founded. It was a vision which acknowledged the centrality of work for the dignity and prosperity of individuals and society at large, but it saw work as a site where young workers could act powerfully as citizens in a community. TAFE has always been about working class education, and it was always about opportunity for those who were marginalised or dispossessed. TAFE existed in Australia before Kangan, and it has grown and developed since.

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