This is all great and good, but unfortunately the bean counters rule. That is the reason TAFE is seen as a failure, and in many instances is one.
The opposite side of the coin is revenue chasing. This side is desperate.
TAFE is simply trotting along the worn road of universities. Survival.
Survival is not inclusive of the greater good, which was once a TAFE focus.

Defunding:
TAFE has been progressively defended over the years to the point of unless.
In its attempts to stay afloat, its main revenue source are Micky mouse courses with similar community value to its cousin the uni. Nix.

They continue to rip off the desperate poor by supplying an endless list of useless industry certificates to the unemployed and in lots of cases, the unemployable.
Its where the money is. That's the fault of Government policy, mostly State Government.

Conflict:
Conflicting Government ideology has driven the VET sector into chaos.
Morrison will not fix the problem. He, like the author, don't get it, they are the problem!

Actually, private providers are a similar but more dangerous disaster.
They are ruthlessly fixated on profit above all ethics and responsibility, and totally self focused.

Dan

What the PM wants for TAFE, should be applied in spades to the PM, his cabinet and Parliament!

You cannot fix the problems created by ideologically driven outsourcing with more of the same. It was and remains a case of fixing what wasn't broke. We spend more now for far less?

All the private players welded to this particular outsourced gravy train need to be levered off, their contracts torn up and trashed for breach of contract.

I mean how many bogus occupations do we teach when every boy and his dog knows the is a limit to the sheer number of
masseurs we need with their hot rock therapies etc-etc.

And TAFE put back in the very professional and technically upgraded hands that ran it when as a properly funded vocational training arm of government, it turned out skilled and useful from day one, graduates with real hands-on skills!

Carpenters teaching/training Carpenters, Plumbers teaching/training Plumbers and Motor Mechanics teaching/training Motor Mechanics etc.

What will happen is the recession we have to have and with it massive job reassignment and automation. And the retirement of all the current ( straight out of uni with heads filled with junk/untried intellectual concepts) experts and moribund bean counters, who have lost the plot/managed to trash a hugely underfunded TAFE!

This will be in areas of service provision and data collection and collating occupations,i.e., bean counters. This is how to make organisations like TAFE more agile and fit for purpose etc.
Alan B.

You'll have to go back further than that Chris. You'll have to reform the schools first.

In the 50s & 60s a 15 year old kid fresh from his intermediate third year exams could undertake any course in any trade. They had the math to do electrical & building trades, [& probably computer if we'd had them], with no trouble. Today even year 12 graduates do not have the math to do the courses.

A friend of ours was a high school junior math & biology teacher, until he was told he was to teach senior math, including math C in the new year. When he said he couldn't even do math C he was told to "muddle through".

He quit. He found his way to doing remedial math courses for TAFE students who, despite high grades in year 12 math, did not have the necessary grounding even to handle trade math required.

He is as happy as a pig in mud. He has for the first time a whole class who want to learn everything he can give them, & come back for more. He finds this very satisfying, & wishes he had started doing it sooner.

This has progressed to remedial classes for university students in the same difficulty. High School math has been so degraded so girls can compete with the boys that it no longer even resembles real math, but has become yet another literary subject.

Both higher education & vocational education including even high school, has become a matter of simply going through the motions, making sure even those with no English don't fail, & handing out that piece of paper at the end. Is it any wonder some new highrise blocks are falling apart just months after completion?

The reform needs to include discipline & resposibility not just Rights !

Are the words responsibility & discipline thread-killers ?

Great article Chris. I feel our whole education system needs to be reformed so we get back to the 3 R's. Teacher's seem to be so focused on social issues these days and especially profits in the universities.