THE NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF) say the recent report criticising TAFE NSW would be used as fuel for future cost-cutting measures by the state government, despite being unreliable.
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The Boston Consulting Group report, commissioned by TAFE NSW, found the organisation lags behind its competitors on convenience, cost and its ability to attract new students.
However the report used data up to three years old and compared TAFE NSW to cost-effective private college, Australian Careers Network – which is currently being investigated by Australia Federal Police for fraud.
NSWTF spokeswoman Kathy Nicholson said the report was “softening people up for a reduction to the TAFE system”.
“IT tries to test the water about how our region is going to react to amalgamations to our TAFE Institutes,” Ms Nicholson.
“The whole language was about assets – imagine if we started to talk about our public schools in relation to occupancy percentages and if we should be selling them off?
“Vocational education is critically important – if you look around, almost everything in our town is either build or serviced by people who were trained at TAFE.”
Ms Nicholson said the report suggested the “bricks and mortar” of TAFE were too expensive and supported moving more courses online.
“It’s hard to deliver a course like plumbing or carpentry online, you need the physical infrastructure to teach it,” she said.
“And besides, TAFE has already been using online courses for over 15 years. I know one teacher who has 15 students at her class in Tamworth and another 17 students on video conference from across the region.”
The report also flagged cutting courses with small enrolment numbers, Ms Nicholson said.
However, she said TAFE has always had a niche market, offering subjects such clock making,
jewellery making and optical dispensing.
“They have low enrolments but are offered nowhere else,” she said.