Something strange is going on in the Parliament of Australia: three federal parliamentary inquiries into Australia's technical and further education system have been established in the past year, two in the past month.
The first was when the then Labor government last March agreed to a Greens request to hold an inquiry by the House of Representatives education committee. Public meetings were held and 173 submissions received before prime minister Kevin Rudd called the federal election and the inquiry ceased.
Last December, Greens senator Lee Rhiannon moved for another inquiry into TAFE by the Senate education and employment committee and this was adopted, with submissions by March 7 and a report expected by May 13. The committee was to consider "any public information provided to the House inquiry" which presumably included the 173 submissions.
Then, on February 26, the House education and employment committee announced it would also hold an inquiry into TAFE "to continue the work of a previous parliament into this area". But whereas the Senate inquiry listed 13 wide-ranging terms of reference, the House inquiry had five, with two relating to skills and employment. It also accepted the previous 173 submissions as evidence with any more to arrive by April 9.
So two teams of parliamentarians were preparing to hold public hearings, possibly in the same cities at the same time, when they would meet the same people who had made submissions and spoken at the same type of meetings last year.
Sceptics say the Abbott government's decision to hold a second House inquiry is an attempt to limit the impact of the Greens in the Senate publicly questioning and deploring the disastrous effect on TAFE institutes of state government cuts and the opening up of the training market to private operators.
After winning last September's election, Tony Abbott removed responsibility for vocational education and training from the federal education portfolio and handed it to Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane. Last month, Mr Macfarlane described the sector on ABC radio as "a convoluted mess and a bureaucratic nightmare".
He said the government had inherited a system "which is so close to broken that we have regular meetings now with people who say 'for God's sake just fix this – it is so complicated, it is so heavily regulated, it is so over-audited we're not getting the results we need' ".
Mr Macfarlane was not available to speak to Fairfax Media but he alarmed TAFE supporters by intimating in interviews that the VET sector was over-regulated and in need of a "very methodical, careful restructuring". This could include opening underused TAFE facilities to businesses and industries – as is being trialled in Queensland – and lifting restrictions on private VET colleges.
Although refusing to elaborate on his plans, Mr Macfarlane has said an implementation program may be rolled out in July – when newly elected senators will take their seats in the Senate. At that point, the government could command enough support to dismantle existing controls that keep a check on misconduct by private training colleges.
More than 5000 training providers, including 61 TAFE colleges, are registered to run vocational education and training courses in Australia. They outnumber the nation's universities by more than 100 to one and their total enrolments are more than double the 1 million Australian students in higher education this year.
But unravelling the multitude of layers that make up VET is like peeling an onion – they seem to go on forever and it's not long before tears start to fall. Publicly funded vocational education is best known through the courses run by the TAFE institutes as well as by some universities and secondary schools, and by agricultural and technical colleges.
Less familiar are the thousands of private VET providers that include training organisations, business colleges, industry associations and individual employers. To add to the complexity, the VET sector is administered by eight state and territory governments plus the Commonwealth, which, under the former Labor government, allocated more than $3 billion in tied grants to state VET programs for the 2013-14 financial year.
TAFE is the largest education and training sector and its colleges have more than 1000 campuses across urban, regional and remote locations in Australia. Many of the institutes also offer their courses throughout the Asia-Pacific region and other offshore regions.
Yet both Liberal and Labor governments at the federal and state level have imposed "reforms" in recent years that are severely affecting the institutes. So much so their supporters argue that TAFE's survival is under threat.
Pat Forward is federal secretary for TAFE at the Australian Education Union and a member of the National Skills Standards Council that sets down the standards VET providers must meet before they can be registered. After a regular meeting of the council was unexpectedly cancelled last month, Ms Forward now suspects it may be abolished.
She also believes the standing council on tertiary education, skills and employment will be shut down. This crucial agency was established less than three years ago by the Council of Australian Governments, comprising the heads of the Commonwealth, states and territories, as a means of ensuring "high quality tertiary education and training through strengthening regulatory arrangements in the tertiary education and training sectors".
Ms Forward says governments across Australia have gone further than other nations in opening vocational education and training to the private sector so as to reduce their own outlays – while shifting the cost onto students.
"But this is leading inexorably to the destruction of TAFE," she says. "And governments are encouraging the proliferation of the for-profit providers by allocating increasing proportions of government funding to them."
Ms Forward refers to an "ideologically driven reform process" occurring in all the states and territories. After four years of market reform, she says 71 per cent of Victorian recurrent government funding for TAFE has been opened to competitive tendering by the private sector. Unable to compete with the low-cost private providers, the TAFE institutes' share of the training market has plummeted from 68 per cent in 2008 down to 40 per cent.
Adding to TAFE's woes, the Victorian government in 2012 slashed $1.2 billion from its spending on TAFE institutes over four years – with 2400 TAFE teachers subsequently losing their jobs and dozens of courses shut down. Not long after, Ms Forward says, governments in NSW, Queensland and South Australia followed suit.
Virginia Simmons, a former chief executive of the multi-campus Chisholm TAFE Institute, says that industry and other enterprises would once have supported a strong TAFE sector. But, because they now have comparatively easy access to government grants to run their own training programs, supporting TAFE is against their own best interests.
"Perversely, government often sees its role as supporting the competitors of the institutes it owns, not as promoting the sustainability of its own assets," Ms Simmons says. "While claiming to be in favour of greater autonomy for the institutes so they can survive in a competitive market, the reality is too often tighter controls and constraints."
Even before the sudden proliferation of private providers, however, unscrupulous characters had been offering shonky courses to mostly Asian students as a back-door means for them to gain Australian permanent residency visas. Charging low fees, the newly established colleges focused on cooking and hairdressing, listed as occupations in demand by the Immigration Department.
Foreign students who received certificates stating they had qualified as cooks and hairdressers gained priority as onshore visa applicants even if their training had been minimal or non-existent. Early evidence of this occurred in 2007 when Monash University's Dr Bob Birrell pointed out that Australia's skills crisis was not being tackled. Instead, "a new crisis has begun".
Dr Birrell revealed that foreign student enrolments in cooking and hairdressing courses had almost tripled in two years and that a "visa racket" was operating. He reported teachers in some of the colleges saying that students were being awarded cookery certificates after attending one weekend class.
Media coverage of the scandal forced the federal government to impose stricter immigration controls on issuing permanent visas while the Commonwealth and the states agreed to establish a national regulator to supervise registered training organisations. The Australian Skills Quality Authority was created in 2011 although its powers do not extend to Victoria and Western Australia, which have their own regulators.
ASQA, as it's called, oversees some 4300 of the nation's 5000-plus training providers but, like the standards councils and the TAFEs themselves, its future may also be in doubt. Mr Macfarlane implied this in an interview when he said he was considering "a more streamlined approach with a self-regulation perspective . . . there's far too much regulation in the system".
Yet a recent ASQA review of the marketing practices adopted by private providers found that nearly half those surveyed were offering qualifications they claimed could be achieved in an unrealistic time, while others were marketing training certificates that were no longer valid.
"Some of the claims being made in their marketing and advertising were simply too good to be true," said ASQA chief commissioner Chris Robinson. "We found that 45 per cent of registered training organisations could be in breach of the national standards required for registration."
Independent VET consultant Dr John Mitchell says the poor training offered by dodgy providers is a result of government policy failure over the past five years. Dr Mitchell has researched and published dozens of papers on the national VET system and said the nationwide policy of "VET reform" was rushed – and botched.
This was because "three pillars of reform" were not put in place beforehand: adequate consumer protection, restrictions on the entry of dodgy providers and, third, ensuring that by allowing private providers to access government funds previously directed to TAFE, "this marketisation of the sector did not severely disrupt the public good work undertaken by TAFE".
Dr Mitchell says the poor implementation of VET reform became apparent in Victoria after exposes in the media and in the Victorian Parliament of "rogue providers and duped students".
"Given the mess around rogue providers, more effective auditing is needed to clean up the situation. In particular, ASQA needs more support," he says. "ASQA's recent reports on deceptive marketing and poor training in VET are highly commendable and are unprecedented in placing a spotlight on the mess."
Opening the VET market to the private sector began in Victoria under the former Brumby Labor government with the aim of luring more fee-paying foreign students. The private providers were paid according to their course enrolments and the number of hours taught and the current Coalition government continued the practice.
But inadequate monitoring by state authorities allowed some private providers to inflate their enrolment numbers and teaching hours and to supply course completion certificates to foreign students who had done little to earn them. When the rorting was revealed, the government cut spending on TAFE.
"Hundreds of providers were rorting the system so the government brought in new rules that eventually drove the overseas students away," says Bruce Mackenzie, outspoken former director of the big Holmesglen TAFE Institute. "Now the private providers are again rorting the system and the TAFEs are paying the cost because of flawed funding models and flawed management of the system."
At a meeting in Adelaide recently, Mr Mackenzie met the chief executive of one of Australia's top 100 companies. He was told the company had been registered as a training provider in Victoria but pulled out because "they didn't want to be part of the shambles or to have their reputation damaged by half the providers who are registered here".
"Australia really needs a full parliamentary inquiry into the whole VET sector, not half-baked comments by a Minister for Industry who has no record of performance in the field," Mr Mackenzie says. "Governments are spending more and more money on VET for less and less return yet unemployment is rising and the quality in VET is falling. Australia needs an inquiry into the best way of providing education and training to protect and provide opportunities for the most disadvantaged young people in the country."
At the time he made those comments, Mr Mackenzie had no idea that Australia's two houses of Parliament would agree with him and set up not one but two investigations. Whether TAFE survives as a result of their recommendations should be clear later this year.
Victoria, the canary down the VET coalmine – theage.com.au/education
VET in schools under review
Nearly 400 secondary schools across Victoria offer vocational education programs to 22,300 students currently enrolled in the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning. That compares with the 149,000 students taking one or more VCE subjects.
The VCAL is an alternative to the VCE and is described as "a hands-on option that gives students practical work-related experiences, as well as literacy and numeracy skills". Instead of going on to university, VCAL students are more likely to continue their studies at a TAFE institute, begin an apprenticeship or find a job.
Although Tony Abbott shifted federal responsibility for vocational education and training to Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, he left VET in schools with Assistant Education Minister Sussan Ley, who also seems to want changes made.
Last month Ms Ley held a meeting in Melbourne with 40 representatives from industry, schools, training providers and government in what she said was a bid to improve the quality of vocational education and training in schools. The Australian Education Union, whose members mostly teach VET courses and run the VCAL programs, was not invited.
In a release, Ms Ley said much had changed since the last VET in schools strategy was drawn up in 2001 and she was concerned about the "growing inconsistency" between the quality of training in schools and the expectations of employers, particularly traditional trades people.
"The future prosperity of our economy and nation depends on a highly skilled workforce, yet Australia is crying out for high-quality trades people in a number of areas," Ms Ley said. "It's becoming harder and harder for students to leave school and pick up unskilled work like generations before them and we need to make sure vocational education is keeping pace."
She said it was time schools, government, industry and trainers worked towards creating a stronger future together "and that's what I'm doing".
"I also want to ensure our kids know they don't have to choose between school and a trade any more – that they can graduate in year 12 with the necessary skills to successfully continue their training with an employer."
The pathway for vocational education students needed to be as clear as that for students heading to university, she said. "They shouldn't be treated like a B team."
Ms Ley outlined five key areas for reform aimed at developing a first-class career pathway for students: stronger linkages with industry; high-quality training; a flexible and responsive system; and a streamlined regulatory environment.
* In 2012, 21 VET programs were available to Victorian years 11 and 12 students across 13 broad industry areas. That year, nearly 50,000 students completed their VCE while almost 12,000 obtained the VCAL. In 2013, more than one in four VCAL students went on after school to further education or training, and 58 per cent began an apprenticeship, traineeship or employment. That is, 84 per cent of VCAL students had a direct pathway to further education, training or work.
