On March 16, the Australian Education Union released two new reports which revealed the extent of the underfunding of TAFE and the consequences for thousands of people who are missing out on training and education as a result.
The reports are a national survey of over 2,600 TAFE teachers and managers, and a research paper prepared by the Centre for the Economics of Education and Training (CEET) at Monash University.
The “State of our TAFEs Survey” revealed that in NSW:
– 76 per cent of teachers and managers said their TAFE did not have enough resources to meet industry needs, particularly in the local community; – 58 per cent of teachers and managers said they had been forced to turn away students in the last two years; – 46 per cent said there were student waiting lists in their TAFE; – 62.4 per cent responded that the overall budget for their department had decreased in the last two years; and – 88.5 per cent believed that their workload had increased since the start of 2008.
Teachers and managers nominated the main industry areas in NSW from which students were turned away as: engineering and related technologies (15.9 per cent), information technology (15.7 per cent), education (15.1 per cent), and language, literacy and numeracy (12.2 per cent).
According to the Australian Education Union, this survey reveals that TAFEs are unable to meet the growing demand from students or industry because they are so starved of funds. Mr Angelo Gavrielatos, President of the AEU, said “Students are being turned away or forced to wait in trade areas like engineering where there are critical national skills shortages.”
The CEET report revealed that in NSW, real recurrent government expenditure per hour of public vocational education and training had declined by 15.7 per cent since 2003. Both the State and Federal Governments need to invest more in TAFE to ensure that the NSW public is able to access quality vocational educating and training.
TAFE’s funding would have been $624 million (or 17 per cent) higher in 2008 than it actually was if both the spending per hour and its share of the money allocated by governments had been maintained at 2003 levels. The report also showed that to reach the ambitious COAG targets set for increased qualifications, an additional $200 million must be spent on average every year between 2009 and 2020.
Mr Gavrielatos continued, “TAFE is recognised as one of the highest quality providers of training and education anywhere in the world and our prosperity as a nation is directly linked to it. There will be no education revolution in Australia unless we invest substantially more in TAFE.”
As the Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has pointed out, some of the things that will not be possible without TAFE in the next decade include the national broadband network, cleaner power generation, hybrid and electric vehicles, more efficient houses and buildings and capturing carbon. It is a worthy goal to have the best-trained and educated workforce in the world. But only by investing in our high-quality TAFEs can we achieve it.
Click on the links to read the reports: State of our TAFEs Survey, CEET Report