The Tasmanian Education Association applauds today’s announcement by the shadow minister for education, Michael Ferguson, that the Liberal opposition will push for the immediate reformation of TAFE.
Television, radio and print media have been running hot on this issue today following the Tasmanian Education Association’s demand that education minister Nick McKim take immediate action to combine the Skills Institute and the Tasmanian Polytechnic to form TAFE.
TEA President, Greg Brown, said, ”Before Tasmania Tomorrow, TAFE Tasmania was winning national and international awards. Now the TAFE brand and its outstanding reputation have all but disappeared. Two administrations, a reduction in courses and an alarming loss of student numbers are causing ongoing problems.”
The TEA believes that the matter must be dealt with now, and that the “review” into TAFE proposed by Nick McKim and Green’s education spokesman Paul O’Halloran will only waste more money and allow the situation to deteriorate further. “The question that should be asked is why the Government needs to undertake a review now? What has it been doing for the last 18 months while over $70 million has been wasted?”
“There is no reason why TAFE cannot be operating from the start of 2012. A review could take twelve months and see the waste of taxpayers’ money blow out to well over $100 million.
“The truth is that TAFE was a world class training institution before the David Bartlett led government started interfering with it,” Mr Brown said. “TAFE Tasmania was winning national and international awards. Now the TAFE brand and its outstanding reputation have all but disappeared. Two administrations, a reduction in courses, staffing dislocation and an alarming loss of student numbers are causing ongoing problems.”
Mr Brown said that Michael Ferguson is correct when he says that the split system has resulted in an inefficient top heavy structure with significant duplication which has led to wide spread industry and community confusion.
