A FRESH START FOR TAFE AND TRAINING IN SA A STRONG PLAN FOR REAL CHANGE 1
We re ready. Over the last four years, we ve been working hard developing our vision for the future of South Australia. Not just policies, but a series of achievable milestones that have been crafted for the long-term benefit of our state. Our focus will be MORE JOBS. LOWER COSTS. BETTER SERVICES. We ve got a strong plan for real change. A STRONG PLAN FOR REAL CHANGE 2
WHAT WE LL DO If elected in March 2018, a Marshall Liberal Government will take immediate action to reform TAFE and give the organisation a fresh start. We will dissolve the current TAFE Board and appoint a new one. initiatives that will create an additional 20,815 apprenticeships and traineeships in South Australia over the next four years; establishing at least one new technical college in Adelaide s western suburbs with a focus on encouraging students to prepare for work in the defence sector; maintaining financial support for the crucial role of Group Training Organisations in the training sector; implementing a major multi-faceted program to encourage more young people to consider pursuing a career through a technical qualification as a first option, rather than as a fall-back plan; encouraging flexible apprenticeship pathways enabling more young people to be learning and earning at the same time; giving industry a stronger voice in our training system; and ensuring that South Australia s training budget is targeted effectively at delivering skills outcomes that lead to real jobs and careers. We will also: implement a range of other critical and immediate improvements including new Board selection procedures and much more rigorous management performance reviews; establish a fully contestable training system; extend the terms of reference of the current TAFE Strategic Capability Review; engage in new partnerships with nongovernment training providers working together to deliver outcomes for South Australia; and work with the Commonwealth to improve approval processes for new and updated training courses. This policy will complement the initiatives of a Marshall Liberal Government to skill South Australians through: providing $100 million to secure matched funding from the Federal Government s Skilling Australians Fund to support a range of
1. IMMEDIATE IMPROVEMENTS AT TAFE SA There are many talented and hardworking educators at TAFE SA but they have been let down by the Board, senior management and the Weatherill Labor Government. The ongoing TAFE scandal has highlighted critical failures. A Marshall Liberal Government will introduce a range of critical and immediate improvements at TAFE SA: pursuant to clause 8(4) of the TAFE SA Act 2012, we will dissolve the current Board and appoint a new one; new Board members will be selected on merit, and must have relevant experience in skills, training, governance or industry; TAFE governance and the quality of training will be further improved through the establishment of an Academic Board, reporting to the TAFE SA Board. This Academic Board will have a critical role in ensuring that the expectations of Industry are being met, through its engagement with the new Industry Skills Councils; management performance requirements will be directly linked to training delivery and made subject to regular performance review and an ongoing audit function; all staff contracts, including performance bonuses where currently applicable, will be reviewed. A staff member s contribution towards the outcome of quality training courses (including failure to pass a quality audit) must be included within performance standards as well as within the KPIs that determine remuneration; and the terms of reference for the current TAFE Strategic Capability Review will be extended. A STRONG PLAN FOR REAL CHANGE 4
2. FULLY CONTESTABLE TRAINING DELIVERY A Marshall Liberal Government will move to a fully contestable training system to ensure that quality, student choice, and industry needs are the factors driving the provision of training courses. We will immediately ensure that subsidised places are made available through all providers for qualifications where TAFE is subject to adverse ASQA findings. Full contestability will require a new funding mechanism for TAFE to directly support the social obligations we expect our public training provider to meet. Currently these obligations are met through an opaque and inefficient system involving an unreasonable loading towards TAFE courses. Not only is TAFE the only provider to be on the subsidised training list for many courses, TAFE gets funded as much as three times more than nongovernment providers to deliver the same course. This inefficient mechanism leads to examples of funded courses that are neither in demand nor meeting social obligations. A prime example was uncovered recently with a Barossa TAFE lecturer funded to deliver a course for which there had been no student enrolments for some time. Social obligation funding will be delivered in a transparent way requiring TAFE to be fully accountable for its expenditure so that it delivers on the high expectations we all have for its service, including in regional South Australia. Our reform will enable TAFE SA to deliver, for example, Certificate I and II pathways courses to encourage disengaged people back into education and training, and it will include other funding focused on meeting social inclusion goals. Other purposes considered necessary in the state s interest may also attract specific funding agreements subject to TAFE SA being fully accountable for the required expenditure. With this targeted support in place, TAFE SA must then compete on a fair basis with non-government, private and not-for-profit, providers. This will ensure that South Australian taxpayers get best value for money, that students get the choice they deserve, and that business and industry can invest in South Australia with confidence that they will be able to count on a trained workforce with the skills that they need. A STRONG PLAN FOR REAL CHANGE 5
3. EXTENDED TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR TAFE STRATEGIC CAPABILITY REVIEW While the immediate improvements for TAFE SA will help get the organisation back on track, and fixing funding will be a boon for the whole training system, the role of TAFE SA within that broader system needs to be more clearly defined. TAFE SA will be moving to an environment where it will be funded transparently, rather than through the current distortions of the Labor Government s manipulated subsidised training list. It will have to operate on a level playing field, with government funding coming at the same rate, and subject to the same evaluation and performance criteria, as nongovernment RTOs. To ensure that TAFE SA can make this transition on a sound footing, backed by a Marshall Liberal Government that will implement the reforms needed to restore TAFE s reputation for quality and excellence, we will extend the terms of reference of the existing TAFE Strategic Capability Review, due to report in April, as we do not believe this review goes far enough. We will ensure that this extended review addresses the following issues: reform of the existing legislative framework governing TAFE SA and the wider training sector; improvements to TAFE s quality assurance processes; how TAFE SA can best deliver on its existing social obligation and social inclusion goals; what further social obligations can best be delivered by TAFE SA, and by what mechanism can they be most suitably funded without distorting the subsidised training list; what opportunities can TAFE SA take up to increase its income streams in a range of areas, including fee for service, international students, shared asset utilisation and other partnerships; should TAFE be providing more innovative course offerings such as summer schools and shorter-timed compressed certificates; whether TAFE SA facilities and infrastructure can be more fully utilised as public assets to deliver training under an alternative model, including consideration of models in other states where broader community access to the training infrastructure creates greater opportunities for training delivery - particularly in regional areas; and whether some current services of TAFE SA not central to delivering on its core mission could be operated as independent institutions, potentially in partnership with universities and other institutions. A STRONG PLAN FOR REAL CHANGE 6
4. FORMING NEW PARTNERSHIPS WITH NON- GOVERNMENT TRAINING PROVIDERS WORKING TOGETHER TO DELIVER OUTCOMES FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA One of the problems that has beset South Australia s training system is that the Weatherill Labor Government has treated non-government training providers as competitors or worse, rather than partners in the delivery of training to South Australian students. After the Skills for All debacle, the Weatherill Government introduced the WorkReady program and greatly reduced the number of courses receiving government subsidies. As part of these changes, non-government training providers were excluded from all but 10% of funded places. A Marshall Liberal Government will convene a regular forum with non-government training providers to ensure a coordinated training effort. The forum will engage with not-for-profit industry led RTOs and with private sector RTOs. It will include RTOs focused on both the local market and on international students. A healthy training sector has room for TAFE SA, the not-for-profit sector, and private operators. The high level of quality and compliance now demanded by ASQA and as a result of Federal Government reforms in recent years mean that we can proceed with confidence that these RTOs are our partners in delivering quality training for South Australians. It is in the interests of students and businesses that we engage constructively with them to give them an opportunity to engage with government policy makers, to ensure that training providers are kept up to date with government policy, and to help coordinate our efforts so that they are fully aligned with the State s strategic and economic needs. A STRONG PLAN FOR REAL CHANGE 7
5. 21ST CENTURY SKILLS - IMPROVED PROCESSES FOR APPROVING NEW AND UPDATED COURSES The structure of nationally developed training products and the processes for changing them are seen as unwieldy, inflexible and cumbersome by providers seeking to respond to change as industry needs change. There have been cases where by the time a Training Package is ready for delivery, it may already be out of date. In some cases, industry has turned to non-accredited training to meet skill needs because those products are not bogged down in government approval processes. Education and training providers need the flexibility to be able to develop training products quickly and to mix and match existing products to deliver workforce development to industry when it is needed. A Marshall Liberal Government will work with Federal agencies to reduce unnecessary bureaucratic processes that create barriers to nimble and robust training delivery. A STRONG PLAN FOR REAL CHANGE 8
WHY WE RE DOING IT A strong training system, with a reputation for quality, is fundamental to a strong economy. Job training must have the confidence of the students enrolling in it and the businesses relying on the skills they develop. Regrettably, the reputation of TAFE SA and the South Australian training system has been trashed as a result of the mismanagement of the Weatherill Labor Government. The Government s failures over the past six years have been highlighted by the Skills For All debacle and the ongoing TAFE SA scandal, which saw our public training provider left wanting by the national regulator, the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA). Quality and compliance issues resulted in all sixteen randomly selected TAFE courses failing an ASQA audit. Only two of those courses have been re-instated so far after months of remedial action. As at February 2018, possible suspension hangs over the remaining qualifications and the national regulator has announced it will audit further courses in the coming months. Meanwhile, a thousand students, apprentices and trainees have just gone through Christmas with an uncertain future. Prior to the current TAFE scandal, the Weatherill Government was already synonymous with failure in the provision of job training. The shortcomings of its Skills For All program were so pronounced that the Legislative Council established a Select Committee to review it. That Committee reported: A recurrent complaint from witnesses to the Committee was the lack of effective consultation and feedback mechanisms with real, tangible outcomes. It can only be assumed that had these been in place, and the insights of industry, and public and non-government training providers been taken into account, Skills for All would have been better able to achieve its goals, and the government may not have exhausted its funds for the program so quickly. The Committee also found that: Skills for All failed to clearly identify the full range of circumstances that led to unemployment, and to recognise that the vocational education and training (VET) needs of school leavers seeking to enter the workforce for the first time, those of long-term unemployed and people with a disability, and those of recently redundant automotive factory workers, for example, are all vastly different, and that removing the impediments to their participation also requires a range of different VET strategies. A STRONG PLAN FOR REAL CHANGE 9
The Government has completely ignored the recommendations contained in the Select Committee s report tabled in August 2017 and indeed refused to participate in the Inquiry. It has also refused to participate in a current Senate inquiry following the damning ASQA audit. The Weatherill Labor Government has delivered a policy outcome that is the worst of both worlds. They have starved the private sector while failing to ensure quality in the public system. Corrective action must be taken to get our training system back on track. There are two key stakeholders government must keep front of mind when it comes to the training system: South Australian businesses which need a skilled workforce, and our students, trainees and apprentices seeking to gain skills to get a good job. The key priorities are quality and job outcomes. Our state s training budget must be prioritised towards delivering quality training that achieves real job outcomes. Industry led not-forprofit Registered Training Organisations (RTO) and Group Training Organisations need to get a fair go they need the chance to offer training opportunities on a fair basis with TAFE which currently receives 83 per cent of state government training funds. It is bad enough that our public training provider has failed to deliver the quality we expect and the Government has refused to accept any responsibility itself for this failure: we now have an enormous challenge to recover from the reputational damage done to the whole training sector. Nothing less than a fresh start is needed for TAFE and the whole training sector. A STRONG PLAN FOR REAL CHANGE 10
STEVEN MARSHALL MP State Liberal Leader www.strongplan.com.au Phone: 08 8363 9111 Email: steven@stevenmarshall.com.au A STRONG PLAN FOR REAL CHANGE 11