Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Workplace Relations

Inquiry into the Role of Institutes of TAFE
Submissions

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Submission 67

Curtin University of Technology
Kalgoorlie Campus
Vocational Education and Training Sector

Submission to House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training

Abstract

Regional areas produce per capita more wealth and to ensure that they continue to do so depends on improvements to technology as this production is knowledge based. TAFE institutes are accessible to workers in the remote areas and provide the knowledge infrastructure as well as pathways to universities. However the roles of VET and HEd are different in that HEd caters in the main to full time students who have not been in employment while VET caters for employees who want to raise their skill levels. More people from HEd go to VET than the other way by a factor of at least 6:1. To keep Australia increasingly productive, investment in educational infrastructure in the regions is required to ensure that the knowledge base is expanded as increased economic output depends on the knowledge base.

Submission

The following submission has been prepared on behalf of the staff of the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector of Curtin University of Technology, Kalgoorlie Campus. The submission has been prepared following consultation with senior staff across the Campus and reflects the views put. In particular it was felt that Kalgoorlie had some important comments to make given its position as a regional institution serving, as it does, remote areas in Western Australia (refer attached Annual Report)

The submission addresses the Terms of Reference of your Standing Committee as follows:

The appropriate roles of institutes of technical and further education; and

The extent to which those roles should overlap with universities.

1. The appropriate roles of institutes of technical and further education

The role of institutes of technical and further education

There are three roles that a TAFE institution fulfils. Firstly, it recognises prior leaming or skills acquisition that is relevant in a workplace. Secondly, it delivers skills training and thereby ensures competency in skills is attained. Thirdly, it develops curriculum, learning packages, study guides or courses of study which meet the training requirements of a workplace to make it more productive. These are the core businesses of a TAFE institute. The other tasks which are done inside a TAFE institute are supporting of those three core activities listed above.

The focus of a TAFE institute is on the workplace and the need to increase productivity of the workplace. Recognition of prior leaming is there so that time is not wasted on skills which have already been attained. The delivery of training in skills is anticipated will make a positive contribution to productivity else the exercise of training is futile. The development of training materials is done openly so that the best training program is offered for a particular workplace need.

We could say the mission of a TAFE institute is to increase the productivity of the workplaces in its region of influence. It also doesn't matter who does the training as long as the workplace increases in productivity.

Another way of looking at a TAFE institute is to categorise those who are trained in an institute. In the first category we can identify school leavers who come as full-time trainees so they can prepare themselves for work by acquiring skills to make themselves job ready and be productively employed. Office and secretarial studies students, hospitality students, nursing, graphic design, child care, performing arts are examples. Some trainees need a credential to progress in their chosen occupation eg nursing, aged care; others only have to demonstrate competency at a satisfactory level to an employer to gain employment.

In the second category we can identify trainees who are in employment but have time release from their employer to acquire skills training either in their workplace or with a TAFE institute or both. Government agencies offer employees time off for study or training during work time and so do employers with their apprentices. This training is aimed to obtain a credential in order to progress in a trade by becoming certified eg electrician, plumber, gas fitter, etc; for reasons of government regulation, licensing requirement or qualification. Often these trainees want to acquire more skills because their life chances will improve given their own needs or because an employer's requirement to up-skill due to changes in technology.

The third category consists of these who come to TAFE to acquire workplace skills and work habits to make them job ready and to improve their employment prospects. These trainees are distinguished from the first category by not being school leavers. Often these are full time trainees in special programs aimed at particular equity groups: women returning to the workforce, the unemployed, Aboriginals and Torres Straight Islanders, adult literacy learners and migrants who need to improve their English.

The fourth category provides for those learners who want to address specific life style, leisure interests or hobby requirements which can be met through skill acquisition. This may lead to self help activities which generally are marginal as far as increasing the productivity of a workplace. For example a course in cake decorating, or dressmaking, or photography, or furniture making or welding may save purchasing the services of a cake decorator, dressmaker, photographer, furniture maker or welder. These types of courses are financed wholly or partly by these learners.

In the fifth category we find trainees who are offered specific instruction tailored to the requirements of an employer or an enterprise. The enterprise or employer pays the full cost of the training. For example an occupational health and safety induction to a firm's new employees or say a specific course to the police department to increase workplace productivity.

In the sixth category, we can identify trainees who come from more than one employer to a training course and they may come from an industry group or a set of enterprises. It is very similar to the fifth category except that the training is not specific to any one enterprise but is generic. For example, the Premier's briefing to the Chief Executive Officers prior to Budget is aimed to make the CEOs do their work more productively in their workplaces. In this instance the Premier acts in the role of a TAFE lecturer vis a vis his trainees, the CEOs, in an in-service course of instruction. Another example is where a TAFE institute offers a course on a fee for service basis on new technology or on the impact of new legislation to anyone who pays the fee, often tailoring the presentation to accommodate the varying requirements of those attending. Some private providers use conferences and other presentations to deliver this kind of course and in this they are no different to TAFE institutes who operate in the same market. Usually the employer pays for this course to increase workplace productivity.

In terms of when training is delivered and in terms of TAFE's purpose to make workplaces more productive, the training should be available at a time to suit the customer. Often this aspect is tied to where the core business (RPL, delivery, development) is carried out and how it is carried out is done to suit the customer. The customer is often the employer of the trainee and it may suit the customer to have the training done in the workplace. There may be a monetary premium with that choice. Preferably if the training is carried out within the TAFE institute, the training should be in a simulated work environment closely resembling the expected workplace environment. Thus hospitality students should receive their training in a training restaurant at times the industry operates ie up to 10.30pm, while automotive apprentices should be trained in a simulated automotive workshop, hairdressers in a simulated salon. It is likely that when the training is closely tied to the workplace conditions, the minimum amount of time is required to bring about acquisition of the work related skills and workplace attitudes ensuring an efficient training environment.

The acquisition of the workplace skill often requires frequent practice to keep the skill job ready for a workplace. A bricklayer who doesn't practice bricklaying soon loses the touch, a secretary may be unfamiliar with new computing packages and also require training to be "up to speed". The other aspect of skills training is that the trainee doesn't acquire skills, which are unlikely to be used.

These above remarks cannot generally be applied to a University education where the emphasis is on course completion. Full time study is seen as desirable and learning is seen as an end in itself, valued for its own sake. Should a student after graduation secure a job, that is seen as not undesirable, but not the purpose of a university education.

In some faculties Law, Medicine, Business, Engineering, Education a University training is directed towards making a workplace eventually more productive. In this sense TAFE institute training and University education have a common goal.

The situation in the regions

There are two levels of issues here. The first is concerned with delivering quality education in thin markets. The second is the question of the role of education in regional educational development.

Regional institutes of technical and further education necessarily provide for a wide variety of courses with low student numbers. Additionally, in the Goldfields region, distances are vast, there are transient populations working shift work in the mining and related industries and infrastructure, including telecommunications technology, is not well developed in remote regions. The issues therefore for this Campus are two-fold - how to provide quality education and training and how to increase access to education and training in the region.

Special issues are:

• Increasing articulation between school, institutes and universities
• Cross-accreditation
• Self-paced learning
• Remote delivery
• Internationalisation

A recent report produced for the Australian Business Foundation Limited, August 1997, The High Road or the Low Road? Alternatives for Australia's Future: a Report on Australia's Industrial Future describes the characteristics of a learning economy and its implications for Australia's future economic development.

The report shows that institutes of technical and further education, as well as universities, play an important role in the learning economy, functioning as both as economic drivers and as influencers of firms/industry sector take-up of innovation. Further, they provide commercial training, management training and may also act as conduits to international networks. This role is critical in remote regions where institutions capable of performing these roles are likely to be scarce.

In the Goldfields Esperance region, the Kalgoorlie College of TAFE and its branch in Esperance merged with the Western Australian School of Mines to form the Kalgoorlie Campus of Curtin University of Technology. These moves have been a deliberate attempt to build strong, appropriate structures, effecting economies of scale and building critical mass.

The past twenty years has seen the VET sector grow into a major 'third sector' of post-secondary education in Australia. The past five years, however, have seen a blurring of previously clear lines of demarcation, as Universities and TAFE sectors both seek access to funds to provide courses in the same arena, and the traditional 'TAFE' role in apprenticeships and Traineeships is moving into the schools arena. By the same token, as Universities actively seek students from overseas, particularly Asia, there is strong demonstrated demand for VET courses further encouraging universities to develop their own offerings.

At the same time, a 'crisis' of identity has been forced upon the TAFE sector as it is encouraged to become directly responsible to and responsive to the training needs of industry as identified by industry, and to compete for the training dollar in an increasingly competitive enviromnent.

It is clear that the 'third sector' role enjoyed since the Kangan Report is no longer viable. Large infrastructures make the VET sector less competitive in the training market, and VET former 'core' business is now being absorbed by schools and universities.

It is evident that the national agenda is moving training from the publicly funded arena to an industry-funded arena. Clear as the move is, industry (largely representative of the cities) has openly stated that it is not prepared to pick up the tab for the positioning of training directly into the workplace, and a potential conflict looms here.

In this context several scenarios have been postulated for the future of TAFE including:

1. A leaner, meaner, highly flexible TAFE sector, with lecturers predominantly working in a consulting role as support to workplace trainers and assessors. There will be little capital infrastructure, as off-the job training is increasingly delivered through a variety of technologies. Large institutions and simulated workplaces will no longer be needed. Industry will employ its own trainers, seeking outside assistance only when it can't deliver itself.
2. TAFEs will become flexible learning centres, providing a range of technological, self-paced, open learning opportunities. There will be little sign of the traditional classroom full of students. Delivery will be international and highly specialised with a concentration on one or two specific areas - no longer the multi-purpose TAFE.

TAFEs are unlikely to direct this change, rather the change will be directed by industry, technological change and political will. TAFEs historically are reactive entities - their creativity lies in how they address external changes, and not on making or leading the changes themselves. The focus for TAFEs in the future will be on rapid, flexible and creative responses to an everchanging external environment.

The trends being experienced are not confidence-inspiring for us in the regions. In the regions there is a need to retain people, to offer a full range of options for people wishing to stay and grow with the region, to attract new people, new firms. The overall trends in TAFE appear to act contrary to these needs. Closer educational public policy links need to be made with regional economic development in order to properly assess impacts at the regional level and to address specific regional needs.

2. The extent to which those roles should overlap with universities

There are differences in the regions. In the non-regional areas there is less need for a combined educational sector delivery. In the regions, however, this is critical.

In the regions where there has been no university, TAFE has traditionally offered university courses generally acting as an agent for a university in an attempt to spread the offering of courses available. Multi-level campuses are also developing similar to that here formed by the merger of university and TAFE interests.

Special issues for the region are:

• Human resource capital (how to build critical mass in the regions)
• Shared scarce resources, including staff, buildings, networks, distribution channels etc
• Transferability of qualifications, part qualifications

In this region acknowledgment of the need to provide for mobile communities has emphasised flexible delivery and articulation and cross accreditation between institutions and differing educational sectors. Interestingly typically graduates from TAFE and/or graduates from university go on to study further, often moving from one sector to the other. Seven times the number of university graduates move from HEd to TAFE compared to the other way. In a region such as ours where the average age is 27 years, and twenty percent of the population turns over every year, these issues become extremely important especially as the population average is in the age group typically interested in vocationally oriented courses and many of these people come to the region as part of a promotional stream. There is also a relatively high level of fly-in fly-out mine workers, working long shifts but needing some form of training. Remoteness plus a transient lifestyle presents special problems for this group.

Ideally there should be a spirit of both cooperation and competition between the sectors - one which concentrates on providing the most relevant, comprehensive yet flexible offering. The sourcing sector is of secondary importance to the student.

Already we are seeing universities develop partnerships with or absorb TAFE sectors. As universities are forced more and more into an economically competitive environment, so they will seek the programmes which keep them running. Inevitably, they will move more and more into training and education which has been the prerogative of TAFE since Kangan. The process will be on-going. National pressures have been towards a more competitive training environment where any provider can compete, and this has included the universities. The added research role of universities positions them ideally to address the immediate competency-based training needs and at the same time develop a far wider-reaching understanding of the environment surrounding the training. This is an advantage TAFEs have not really attempted to copy.

The University/TAFE combination into a single entity appears unavoidable. The larger corporate entity seems to be economically more efficient (though not necessarily in other ways), and the move to blur the lines between the two sectors has already set the scene for further merging. As the better resourced and more stable of the two sectors, it is likely that the universities will strengthen at the expense of the TAFEs.

In the regions the role of educational institutions as economic drivers becomes critical. Here the concern is with maintaining regional economies to nationally competitive standards and increasing job opportunities and training for both existing jobs and for changing requirements.

Conclusions

From the above it can be seen that regional requirements will have two major impacts:

1. Policy implications
   • Remote area requirements
   • Strategic planning implications for changing requirements
   • Economic development
2. Budgetary implications
   • Strategic budgets
   • Demonstrator effects
   • New and changing skills

Recommendations

1. More research is required to demonstrate the effectiveness of regional TAFE providers in providing skills to local industry.

2. There is a need to facilitate the amalgamation of TAFEs into universities so that articulation between the two sectors of post secondary education is frictionless.

3. The association of regional TAFEs with Universities whether through mergers or memoranda of understanding will facilitate the provision of courses in remote areas that supply a high level of output particularly in the export sector.

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