Game changing report for TAFE – comment by CEO Jenny Dodd

Dr Michele Bruniges and her colleagues the Hon. Professor Verity Firth and Jason Ardler are commended for producing a series of practical recommendations as part of the NSW Vocational Education and Training (VET) Review Interim Report that will ‘rebuild a strong and sustainable TAFE NSW’ and make it the ‘centre of the NSW vocational education system’.

For the last few years, TDA and its CEO and Managing Director members have been calling out the unique purpose and role of TAFE. While efficiency and sustainability must underpin how TAFEs operate, confusing TAFE’s purpose with the over 3500 other RTOs has led to the popular mantra TAFE is ‘just another RTO’. The NSW VET Review Interim Report (the Review) has articulately put a stop to that view.

The first recommendation of the Review is that the NSW Government should clarify TAFE NSW’s role and purpose through a Charter. That Charter should be underpinned by four principles. The first of those is that TAFE NSW must be able to become a ‘future-focused, strategic leader that meets the skills needs of NSW’. This will mean that some of the shackles of the current constraining VET infrastructure will need to be loosened for TAFE NSW to achieve that outcome.

The second principle is what really distinguishes TAFE, and that it is as a ‘provider of public good’. To have this written down and called out is welcome. Unlike other providers in the market of VET, regardless that most deliver quality outcomes for students, their purpose is not to be a ‘provider of public good’. Given TAFE (and most RTOs) are funded by taxpayers, a principle for TAFE NSW that it should be about ‘public good’ is welcomed.

This mention of TAFE and the link to public good is also explicit in the Universities Accord final report. In Chapter 6 the recommendations state: “That to achieve better alignment between higher education and vocational education and training and to allow TAFEs to be more responsive to student and industry needs, the Australian Government: explore pathways for selected TAFEs to become self-accrediting in VET at the Australian Qualification Framework (AQF) Level 5 and above in areas of national priority, starting with areas such as net zero emissions, care and digitisation.”

In this context the public good is Australia’s critical and emerging industries.

TDA and the more than 550 who have registered for TDA Convention 2024 in May in Sydney look forward to hearing more from the Hon. Steve Whan, Minister for Skills, TAFE and Tertiary Education on Thursday morning about development of the TAFE NSW Charter. Thank you to the Minister for accepting our invitation to speak at this critical time of renewal for TAFE.

And for those attending we also are delighted that the talented member of the Review panel, the Hon. Professor Verity Firth will be a member of the affirmative for the great debate on Thursday afternoon about whether indeed “TAFE is at the heart”.