Federal Labor is promising to cover the cost of 465,000 TAFE places, including 45,000 new places. But there’s a chronic shortage of VET teachers and trainers, so that problem has to be fixed first.
VET’s role in employable skill development is critical. But we also need to strongly support the role VET plays in getting disadvantaged groups into education and work.
Diplomas of circus arts, fraud control, explosive ordinance manufacture, and sound and vibration therapy are among 478 courses that will be excluded from government funding.
A new VET student loan scheme will aim at putting a stop to rorting by dodgy private colleges. Education Minister Simon Birmingham says the new scheme is being built from the ground up.
Under the proposed plan for reform, there is still a risk that private providers will continue to shop between the Commonwealth and the states for the best price and conditions.
Loan caps are only a partial solution to a much bigger problem – declining public investment in VET and a dysfunctional VET financing system, which neither side of politics has been willing to address.
Damian Oliver, University of Technology Sydney and Serena Yu, University of Technology Sydney
Lured by government subsidies, registered training organisations are enrolling people into VET courses that do not match their needs and for which there is a dubious case at best for taxpayer support.
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After announcing a slew of changes to vocational education and training (VET) earlier in the week, Industry Minister Ian MacFarlane made further changes yesterday to the regulation of the sector. While…