The Senate committee inquiry into the South Australian TAFE shambles held its sole hearing on Friday afternoon in Sydney. People appearing were Mark Paterson from ASQA, John Quiggin from the University of Queensland, a prominent critic of markets in training, TAFE Directors Association head Craig Robertson, Jenny Briggs from Business SA and John Buchanan from the University of Sydney.
The training community now waits the committee’s report, although CMM suspects Professor Buchanan’s submission will appeal to the committee’s Labor-Green majority;
“Currently in vocational education there is no anchor. TAFE used to be the anchor – but no longer. The challenge is not to get back to some mythical golden age. Rather, the challenge is to revitalise a strong public vocational education system built around a renewed TAFE to provide an anchor appropriate for today’s world. This will not be achieved by TAFE SA getting more resources for so-called ‘community service obligations’ or tightening up its ability to confirm with the requirements of training packages. It requires a new bi-partisan commitment to revitalisation of vocational education as a quality option for the very large proportion of people who don’t go to university and the growing numbers of university graduate who take vocational education courses.”