Cause for hope – comment by CEO Craig Robertson

In Beijing last week I was asked by a British ex-pat now living in Washington and an Aussie living in England if I was confident about the future of vocational education in Australia. Admittedly, I had just been lamenting the poor participation levels in the sector and praising the clear enthusiasm for vocational education in China.

I said I was. My confidence is not borne from the Joyce Review or the Commonwealth’s reforms, COAG’s Roadmap, the AQF review, the review of higher education provider standards or the forthcoming prognostications of the Productivity Commission, although these all help.

Nor is it borne solely from the new lease of life in the federal bureaucracy toward VET, although that will now be tested. Federal responsibilities for VET will be merged into an expanded education, skills and employment portfolio, some six months after leaving the education portfolio following the federal election!

I’m confident because vocational education is right for the times.

This past week, much has been made of Australia’s performance in PISA, the OECD program for measuring educational effectiveness. Last year 14,273 15 year-olds representing 779 Australian schools were assessed in reading, maths and science. For the first time Australia is back to the OECD average. While that may be due to other countries leapfrogging us, there are two disturbing results.

Firstly, as the graphs below show, we are in decline in these important foundation skills. Secondly, we are not lifting the results of those from disadvantaged backgrounds. I heard one commentator say we have too many students in disadvantaged circumstances in disadvantaged schools. Our education driven egalitarian ideal seems a shattered dream.

Clearly, Australian schools have a challenge on their hands, but these results have a flow-on. The students of 2018 will be entering post-school life from the end of next year. In a world of work where basic skills set the foundation for the head and heart worker and entrepreneur (as presented by Deloitte during the year) a large proportion start at risk. Universities cannot be the sole solution. They now need to be confident of each student’s prospect for success if they want to protect performance levels which sets their growth funding.

A new intervention is required if Australia is to recover, and vocational education is the logical response. Past cohorts of PISA students have formed the pools for the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth (LSAY) administered by NCVER. A fantastic (although somewhat alarming) visual shows the movement of PISA students after school. Very few choose VET first off, clearly favouring university or work, or in a few cases, an apprenticeship.

Major structural reform of vocational education is needed, beyond that proposed by Joyce.

By structural I mean across vocational education, top to bottom – breaking down the over-reliance on markets to solve matters of government responsibility, to a new approach to content of vocational education and a trust in training providers and the training professional to do the job they are set up to do.

Time is short. Add the other news this week of poor economic growth, suppressed wages and failing productivity, and genuine (structural) reform is even more urgent.

The issue will compound. The population of 15 year-olds in 2018 was the lowest for many years and now there’s a bubble of about 30,000 extra school students per year moving through from late primary school, before we take account of new migrant families.

The matter is critical. Many countries in our region, China chief among them, are looking to vocational education to enliven their economic growth and to value-add to their economic outputs. We can’t afford to be left behind!

My confidence is well founded. Transformation is available through genuine vocational education with a learning model that can activate students and lift their aspirations for their career and life. My confidence is in the capacity of TAFEs to build this new form of vocational education – professional vocational education. It’s an evolution of an educational approach held to, even during the travails of the last decade.
#ThePowerofTAFE

Good news at the end of the Parliamentary year. On the last day of sitting, new arrangements for Tuition Protection for VET Student Loan (VSL) and FEE-HELP were passed. The Government proposed that all providers of VSL and FEE-HELP needed to sign-up to the government operated Tuition Protection Scheme through a per-student base administration fee plus a risk-based premium. TAFEs were to be subject to the base administration fee only, however in amendments put to the Senate and agreed by the Government, TAFEs are excluded from the administration fee as well. The Senate accepted that the governments owning and governing TAFEs would always protect the interest of TAFE students in the highly unlikely event they were displaced and therefore fees to the TPS were not needed. We are grateful for the Government’s decision.

Next week is our last newsletter for the year and promises a Christmas Carol of some form!