Restoration of colleges is fundamental

The Tasmanian Greens today said that they are continuing to consult with education stakeholders over necessary Tasmania Tomorrow reforms and are hopeful that a workable resolution can be arrived at.

Greens Education spokesperson Paul O’Halloran MP said that all three political Parties have different positions and further negotiations and discussions will be necessary, but that recent media reports indicate that Labor have moved a significant way towards adopting the model the Greens took to the State election.

“The Greens’ policy is to restore the integrity of our colleges as the first step towards ensuring that we can move forward and focus on retention, numeracy and literacy issues, and therefore should today’s media reports be accurate, it is heartening to see Labor start to move in that direction,” Mr O’Halloran said.

“Restoring the integrity of the colleges, and ideally returning them back beneath the Department of Education, is a key plank of the Greens’ election policy and is clearly what the community wants to see happen.”
“There is still more work to be done and further issues to be resolved through further talks with stakeholders, and both the Labor and Liberal parties, to resolve the outstanding matters of difference.”

“We are still consulting in regard to the restoration of the nationally recognised TAFE brand, amongst other issues.”

“It is clear from the feedback from many stakeholders that the implementation of the Tasmania Tomorrow reforms was flawed, and action is needed to roll-back the structural problems that have got in the way of delivering good education outcomes, and the first key step is to restore the integrity of the colleges,” Mr O’Halloran said.