A Policy Framework to Support a New Social Settlement in TAFE

Abstract

The Whitlam Government’s policies for TAFE were visionary and TAFE became part of our social infrastructure. TAFE contributed to regional social and economic development, and it supported social inclusion by providing individuals with access to vocationally oriented education that supported their individual development, helped them access good jobs, and helped them to contribute to their families, communities and society. However, TAFE has been decimated by the failed experiment of the last 30 years in marketisation and through the imposition of narrow competency-based education qualifications. A new Federal Labor government will inherit a low trust vocational education system in which there has been a loss of confidence in vocational education qualifications, TAFE has been decimated, there has been a precipitous decline in publicly funded enrolments, fragmentation of the system, and ever increasing regulation to stamp out bad behaviour after it has occurred. The vocational education market has comprehensively failed and cannot be fixed through adjusting settings. A for profit market results in a race for profits and a race to the bottom in quality. The competency-based training model of curriculum has also failed. It has facilitated the vocational education market through specifying fragmented competencies that can be bought and sold and through a narrow focus on specific skills needed for particular jobs. This model closes students’ possibilities and options through being too narrow, and it is pointless because most graduates do not work in the intended occupation associated with their qualification, apart from regulated occupations such as nursing or the traditional trades. A new model is needed which builds on a modernised Kangan vision, so that TAFE can once again contribute to sustainable regional social and economic development, to individual development and choice, and to building tolerant, socially inclusive communities. This paper, commissioned by the John Cain Foundation, offers elements of a new policy framework to rebuild TAFE and to build a high trusted vocational education system with trusted qualifications. It argues that TAFE institutes are the local anchor institutions of the vocational education system and of their communities. They are the anchor of the vocational education system because they are the public institutions entrusted with fulfilling public policy objectives. They are the anchors of their communities because they build close links with employers and support the development of a high-skilled workforce; because of their close connections with local economic, social and cultural institutions; and, because of their ability to support and work with local disadvantaged communities.