[Greens-Media] Media release: O'Farrell training market excludes late developers

[John Kaye]

O'Farrell training market excludes late developers

Media release: 4 November 2013

Documents obtained by the Greens show that Sydney Institute of TAFE is planning to shed 36 percent of its permanent teacher workforce in courses that provide basic skills and prevocational education, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.

(A copy of the leaked document is available on request)

The changes are being developed to prepare Sydney Institute for the impacts of the O'Farrell government's Smart and Skilled competitive training market.

Core-funded places, which account for 87 percent of current faculty enrolments, will be replaced by training entitlements that will be available to only 23.5 percent of current students.

Dr Kaye said: "The O'Farrell government is slamming the door on young people who leave school without the skills needed to start training.

"Hundreds of students in Sydney who lack reading, writing, numeracy and learning proficiency will be denied the chance to make good on their deficiency and go on to further study.

"The leaked document proves that under Smart and Skilled disadvantaged students do not make an attractive business proposition. They are to be denied the opportunity to reengage with education and training.

"The devastation of prevocational and basic education programs at Sydney Institute gives an appalling insight into what TAFE will look like under the O'Farrell government's plans to abandon the public provider to a competitive market. 

"Here is the evidence writ large in teaching job losses and course cancellations. In this one faculty, 25 permanent teachers and head teachers are to be forced out. Some will be replaced with casuals but many courses will just not run.

"The O'Farrell government has clearly learned the public relations lessons of the Victorian TAFE catastrophe. By getting rid of permanent teachers before the market begins to undermine the public provider, there will be one less set of voices to join in student and community protests.

"TAFE is to become even more of a business, focused on competition and commercial survival at the expense of serving the whole community.

"Sydney Institute has unintentionally created a dystopian vision of the future of training in NSW. 

"Unless the O'Farrell government is forced to abandon its plans for an aggressive competitive market, we will have to prepare for a world without TAFE," Dr Kaye said.

For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455