Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Workplace Relations

Inquiry into the Role of Institutes of TAFE
Submissions

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Submission 78

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

APPROPRIATE ROLES OF INSTITUTES OF TECHNICAL AND FURTHER EDUCATION

Executive Summary

The Policy Environment:

• The need for an efficient public sector vocational education service provider as a basis for internationally competitive Australian enterprises remains a given in the contemporary policy environment
• International policy directions in the later 1990s have matured from the narrow cost minimisation, government minimalism of the 1980s to focus on quality outcomes, learning organisations and lifelong learning
• TAFE institutions are prepared and willing to participate in a competitive training environment but are equally mindful of the benefits of collaboration and community service
• The essential lesson of the current policy environment is that there is no one best fit for a diverse range of policy forces, but rather a requirement for balance and pragmatism.

The Contemporary VET Policy Framework:

• A policy framework has been developed for Australian VET without a solid research base and has overlooked basic facts about the training market, the VET client base, the acquisition of competencies and the consequences of user choice
• Attempts to redefine the provision of vocational education as a 'training market' ignore the economic preconditions for genuine markets and overlook the realities of the VET sector
• The assertion that employers as a whole are the clients of TAFE is a misconception. The overwhelming majority of TAFE graduates have made their own decision to train, in the aim of changing jobs or getting first employment
• TAFE Institutes accept user choice for indentured trainees whose employers receive public subsidy. It is noted that underprovision of training in costly or highly specialised skills or in rural locations is highly likely in a user choice model.
• TAFE Institutes are concerned at the lack of support for Mayer, generic competencies in the current VET policy framework and at the existence of disincentives to educational quality in user choice and labour market programs

The Role of the Public Sector in VET:

• TAFE Institutes represent an enormous community investment and national asset.
• There are services which can only realistically be provided by a public training network.
• It is logical to expect a core government service in school, vocational and university education, while promoting diversity and user pays principles.
• Outcomes data point to productivity gains by the TAFE system and high levels of client satisfaction.
• TAFE Institutes have transformed their operations despite a wide range of barriers resulting from governments' failure to liberalise TAFE management arrangements to keep pace with policy directions in the national VET environment.

Intersectoral Considerations:

• Too frequently policy proposals are made about TAFE with the needs of schools and universities in mind, marginalising the more than one million Australians who use TAFE each year.
• Issues of articulation are important, but only at the margin.
• TAFE and universities have developed a wide range of successful cooperative arrangements.
• Cooperation makes more sense than subordination of TAFE to university interests through amalgamations.
• There is a serious imbalance between enrolments of young people in VET and higher education.

Relations with Industry:

• TAFE Institutes enjoy an extremely close liaison with industry on a day to day basis and through their governance arrangements.
• These linkages are more meaningful than the ANTA/business lobby nexus which dominates national VET policy.

The Role of TAFE Institutes:

• While there are advantages to on-the-job learning, there are also great benefits in institution based education, and institution based education can be the source of outreach into enterprise and community skill development.
• TAFE Institutes in their current form were based on the concepts of lifelong and recurrent education which emerged from UNESCO and the OECD in the 1970s; there is currently a dramatic resurgence of interest in these concepts, with new reports in Britain, from UNESCO and from the OECD.
• Lifelong education requires a much greater public commitment than the leave-it-to-the-market approaches of the early 1990s and a much greater emphasis on general as well as vocational education.

Governance and Management of TAFE Institutes:

• There needs to be less centralisation in the national VET sector with national institutions recast to serve VET, not to control it.
• TAFE Institutes need to become self-managing organisations in the sector, either as stand alone Institutes or as a self-governing consortium. The final choice needs to be made by States reflecting their regional needs.
• Governments need to decide on the balance they wish to strike between market-led provision and policy-driven provision of TAFE services. They need to implement seriously the purchaser /provider split.
• TAFE Institutes must become more visible in national policy making.

Conclusions:

• TAFE Institutes offer an efficient service delivery to clients, mostly individual Australians, who express considerable satisfaction at their educational experience and employment outcomes.
• TAFE is a large and clearly defined sector of education. Policy in relation to TAFE Institutes needs to be determined by the needs of its own large client base, not by the needs of other education sectors.
• The national policy framework developed since the establishment of the Australian National Training Authority in 1993 has not clearly delineated the role of TAFE Institutes, although they are overwhelmingly the principal source of vocational education in Australia. This largely arises from ambivalence by governments over the balance to be struck between market forces in vocational education and their broader policy objectives.
• Quality and equity have been downgraded in the push to create the appearance of a training market. Recognition frameworks and tendering systems pay no direct regard to whether a provider offers a full education service, including learning support and student amenities. TAFE Institutes offer more than institution based training, but the strengths of Institutes as educational institutions underpin the whole vocational education system.
• Emphasis on narrow vocational competencies rather than the key competencies advocated by the Mayer Report is undermining the quality of vocational education in Australia at a time when the international policy environment has reinvigorated the concepts of lifelong education and flexible skills for life.
• TAFE Institutes not only offer the highest quality of educational service available in the sector. They also have the closest and most widespread relationships with Australian enterprises. Both the educational expertise and industry connections of TAFE are ignored in national policy making.

Whether the future direction of policy affecting TAFE operations is market or policy led, governments must take action to free TAFE Institutes from the restrictions of public

The Policy Environment:

The Committee's review of the roles of TAFE Institutes comes at a time when the policy directions which dominated the 1980s and early 1990s have been replaced by a greater diversity of opinion and an increased appreciation of the need for balance in policy prescriptions.

In vocational education, this is exemplified by the Delors Report issued by Unesco, and the OECD report Lifelong Learning for All, the culmination of a decade long project on the role of vocational education in modern economies. Very similar conclusions have been reached in the United Kingdom by the Dearing Report and the 'Learning Works' report of the British Further Education Council. In each case, there is a revisiting and favourable re-evaluation of the 1970s concept of Lifelong or Recurrent Education.

Within the private sector, the concept of quality focused 'Learning Organisations' has supplanted narrower visions of short term cost competitiveness. A Learning Society based on Learning Organisations and committed individual learners very substantially builds on the 1970s idea of lifelong education, crucial to the conclusions of the Australian (Kangan) Committee on Technical and Further Education

These views of the role of technical and further education also embrace the findings of analysts of international competitiveness such as Michael Porter's Competitive Advantage of Nations and the New Classical school of economic growth theorists, who view vocational education as an essential infrastructure of a competitive economy, one in which under-investment and sub-optimal growth is likely without significant government intervention.

In many ways contemporary views about vocational education as an engine of economic growth and competitiveness mirror concerns of the late 19th century, when the then 'tiger' economies of Prussia, Austria and Japan seemed to be outpacing Britain and its colonies. The solution of the time was to replace the purchaser /provider model of technical education of colonial NSW and Victoria with centralised, State technical education systems.

It is not suggested that Australia should revert to the solutions of the nineteenth century, despite the outstanding technical education systems then created. The relevant lesson is that the same diagnosis can give rise to diametrically opposed remedies. There is no one best solution and the recent tendency to hold that one answer alone -for example, an unqualified reliance on markets in vocational education- does not provide an adequate base for medium and long term policy.

Key Points

• The need for an efficient public sector vocational education service provider as a basis for internationally competitive Australian enterprises remains a given in the contemporary policy environment
• International policy directions in the later 1990s have matured from the narrow cost minimisation, government minimalism of the 1980s to focus on quality outcomes, learning organisations and lifelong learning
• TAFE institutions are prepared and willing to participate in a competitive training environment but are equally mindful of the benefits of collaboration and community service
• The essential lesson of the current policy environment is that there is no one best fit for a diverse range of policy forces, but rather a requirement for balance and pragmatism.

The Contemporary VET Policy Framework:

Since the establishment of the Australian National Training Authority at the beginning of 1993, a new policy framework has been developed in Australian vocational education. The framework essentially involves:

• definition of vocational education and training as a market sector, despite the absence of the normal prerequisites of a competitive market environment
• attempts to substitute employers generically as the client of the VET sector, rather than individual students or enterprises
• adopting the model of user choice in place of market solutions in areas of high public subsidy
• the adoption of a competency based training model as the basis for curriculum development and instructional methodology.

VET as a Market

As a College of Education Discussion Paper outlined the issue:

The case for a competitive training market is still to be made. The proponents have assiduously avoided doing so because opening up the matter to scrutiny and public debate would force the marketeers to go beyond doctrine and demonstrate that benefits outweighed costs.

The concept of a market for training was first introduced by the Deveson Inquiry in 1990. However, Deveson was careful to note

the mere keeping of books of account with dollar records does not of itself constitute a market. Nor does commercialism necessarily involve a market....The distinguishing feature of a market is the ability to conduct transactions with relative freedom among many buyers and sellers

The Deveson Committee went on to argue that vocational education was inevitably a mix of market and non-market elements and that "clarification of the appropriate role of market processes in the overall training industry is urgently needed". That clarification has so far been avoided by simply retitling vocational education services as a training market.

The VET environment differs markedly from genuine markets because of the large elements of subsidisation, effective barriers to entry in some market segments, the imposition of non-market obligations on some players and not on others, the dominant bargaining position of government funders, the existence of regulatory distortion, the lack of an adequate market knowledge base for all customers, the relative insignificance of market signals in investment decisions and the use of non-price competition.

These barriers to market effectiveness were confirmed by ANTA's consultations on its report Developing the Training Market. These consultations found

• widespread support for government's role in the training market, in providing strategic support to industry and community skill development, in responding to market failure and in promoting equity
• wide support for a system of strong TAFE Institutes operating alongside and in cooperation with quality private provider networks
• the majority of those consulted considered that if TAFE were not adequately maintained and developed, expensive areas of VET, community service obligations and quality issues would not receive the attention they deserve

The Clients of VET and TAFE

Since the establishment of ANTA it has been almost impossible to obtain a clear statement from national policy makers of who is supposed to be the client of VET. A standard phrasing has been developed which clouds the distinction between industry or employers as a whole and the actual customer who participates in training programs and pays at least in part for their provision. Usually, this is an individual student, though in TAFE commercial activities an individual enterprise is the customer.

The OECD has pointed out that whatever administrative arrangements or instructional technologies are adopted in vocational education, the fundamental transaction is between a motivated learner and a competent teacher. Within the Australian vocational education sector, the simple fact is that the overwhelming majority of students undertake training on their own account. The data show that TAFE graduates overwhelmingly undertook their courses to change jobs or to gain their first employment.

This is evident from the ABS survey Graduate Outcomes, TAFE Australia. In examining the employment status of TAFE graduates it was found that

• only 23% had the same job before, during the final semester and after their TAFE course: these were mostly trade students
• half those who stayed in the same job during and after their course already had a first post-school qualification
• 40% of graduates were only part-time employees before their course ended and moved on to full time employment after finishing
• 15% of employed graduates were unemployed before gaining their qualification
• 13% of employed graduates were not in the labour force before gaining their qualification

This point was made clear in the ANTA commissioned consultancy, Identification of a Vision for Vocational Education and Training, where the consultants point out that the bulk of vocational education...is undertaken at the initiative of the individual, not of the employer

Australian TAFE has had a century of experience in building links with Australian industry. TAFE SA, like other TAFE providers, has long been involved in customisation of programs for industry, but sees this function as supplementary to the provision of services to individual learners, TAFE's primary client base. In all cases, the basic educational transaction is between a student, whether in a classroom or industrial workplace, and a teacher, whether present in person or through technology.

User Choice

User choice will be implemented from 1 January 1998 as the basis for funding the training of indentured employees. Most of these employees- apprentices and trainees- will receive the formal part of their training in TAFE Institutes, although there is an increasing uptake by private training institutions

It is important to bear in mind that students in apprentice and traineeship courses amount to only some 11% of TAFE students. Apprentice numbers have been declining consistently for some years, contrary to previous experience in the years of recovery from recession. Coupled with the abandonment of declaration of vocations in most jurisdictions, the apprenticeship system may well cease to be a significant feature of Australian training arrangements for the first time since indentures were first issued in NSW in 1806.

Traineeship numbers (and hence 'new apprentices') have shown some signs of growth, but as VET commentator Des Fookes has pointed out, a transition from three year training to one year programs does not represent a strengthening of the national skills base. Moreover, the greatest growth has been in level 1 traineeships, which resemble remedial education more than career training.

TAFE Institutes are prepared to participate in the user choice system, but it must be expected that, as anticipated in the Carmichael report, TAFE will increasingly cease to be a major source of training in this area. The cost disadvantages borne by TAFE Institutes, the impossibility of planning without certainty of funding from year to year and the unwillingness of Institutes to be cast as trainer of last resort for low demand, remote location or other high cost training, make this area increasingly non-feasible for the TAFE system.

It must be noted that user choice was adopted as policy before research was commissioned by ANTA into the practicalities and cost benefits of implementation. Almost certainly, Australia will need increasingly to import skills in a number of economically important areas for which training on a user choice basis is not attractive for either private or public providers.

Competencies

There has been debate about the validity of the competence model chosen by ANTA and previously by the National Training Board. Without entering that debate, TAFE Institutes are concerned that, while they have met the challenges of redesigning curricula to the prescribed CBT model, there is little support from national policy bodies for the pursuit of the generic competencies which the Finn and Mayer Reports considered essential for students in all sectors and which have always been the foundation of lifelong learning.

The contemporary VET policy framework assumes that specific vocational competencies will be transmuted in some unspecified way into Mayer, generic competencies. The need for educational expertise in the development of curriculum and teaching and learning methodologies has been ignored and the view adopted that industry endorsement of competencies is the only relevant consideration.

The then South Australian Department for Employment, Training and Further Education in 1996 used funding from a DEET Key Competencies grant to undertake a collaborative project with Flinders University Institute for the Study of Teaching to investigate the extent to which training in vocational competencies led to the acquisition of generic competencies. The answer was that very little transfer took place unless specific educational strategies were in place to achieve it.

Research on the question of skill transfer at the National Centre for Vocational Education Research has also shown that such skill transfer is extremely difficult to achieve and requires determined educational effort. This in fact has long been a conclusion of research in cognitive psychology.

TAFE Institutes are concerned at the lack of recognition given to the educational task of vocational educators and at the implied policy prescription that to meet private trainers on an equal cost basis educational expertise, including that gained from professional teacher education, should be jettisoned as an unnecessary cost burden.

Key Points

• A policy framework has been developed for Australian VET without a solid research base which has overlooked basic facts about the training market, the VET client base, the acquisition of competencies and the consequences of user choice.
• Attempts to redefine the provision of vocational education as a 'training market' ignore the economic preconditions for genuine markets and disguise the realities of the VET sector.
• The assertion that employers as a whole are the clients of TAFE is a misconception. The overwhelming majority of TAFE graduates make their own decision to train, in the aim of changing jobs or getting first employment.
• TAFE Institutes accept user choice for indentured trainees whose employers receive public subsidy. It is noted that underprovision of training in costly or highly specialised skills or in rural locations is highly likely in a user choice model.
• TAFE Institutes are concerned at the lack of support for Mayer, generic competencies in the current VET policy framework and at the existence of disincentives to educational quality in user choice and labour market programs.

The Role of the Public Sector in VET:

The Taylor Review of the ANTA Agreement, while written in a context supportive of a more competitive training environment, gave a clear and coherent analysis of the role of the public TAFE system. This resulted in part from the review's concern at the lack of a well defined national policy perspective on TAFE. In fact, the Taylor report concluded that any reluctance within TAFE to embrace a competitive perspective should be attributed "to a failure to articulate a clear role for TAFE within an expanding VET sector".

The Case for a Public Sector

The Taylor review makes the points that:

• the community has a big sunk investment in the TAFE system, which has a skilled workforce and currently meets a wide range of client needs
• the size of TAFE systems provides opportunities for economies of scale not possible in smaller institutions
• there will continue to be a need for investment in high cost facilities for occupations which have few members but are of key importance to industry and are unlikely to attract private providers
• the history of vocational education in Australia has illustrated the volatile and cyclical nature of industry commitment to VET
• the widespread TAFE infrastructure and experienced staff with student support services provide a ready facility for delivering education options to disadvantaged groups
• the TAFE country network is a community facility that could not be readily replaced
• it is logical to have a basic government service within the three sectors of school, university and vocational education, even while promoting diversity and various elements of user pays within each sector

Evidence produced by sources such as the Taylor review and the graduate outcomes survey show that TAFE Institutes have greatly improved productivity while maintaining high levels of client satisfaction: 80 per cent of graduates indicate that they achieved their main objective for taking their course.

These improvements have been made despite the failure of governments to free up their TAFE Institutes to act as autonomous organisations within the VET sector. Institutes continue to carry a burden of public service restrictions and political interference. Governments have yet to fully realise that their decisions to make TAFE one participant in a training market are inconsistent with the use of TAFE Institutes to effect government policy or to distribute benefits to individual constituencies.

Two improvements are required. One is to set in place the self-management structures required for TAFE Institutes to act within a market environment where governments have deemed this appropriate. The other is to spell out clearly where governments wish services to be provided as a community service and to arrange funding distributions appropriately.

This in turn requires governments to tackle the basic issue, which also has to be faced in school and university education, of the extent to which they wish to provide education as a basic infrastructure and the extent to which they are ready to let market forces determine outcomes.

In any case, governments should be mindful of Taylor's major finding that

Competition is not an end objective, but a useful tool for stimulating efficiency and in achieving public sector reform. But the other part of the equation is empowering the public authority to compete with equal vigour.

Barriers to Competitive TAFE Operation

TAFE Institutes continually face the consequences of government ambivalence on whether they believe VET is a training market or a community service. The entire ANTA policy framework, which simultaneously promotes market solutions while devising a national strategic plan and policing State Training Profiles and maintenance of effort targets, is illustrative of the dilemma faced by TAFE Institutions.

Some of the barriers put in the way of TAFE Institutes functioning as market participants have been spelt out by VET consultant Kaye Schofield:

• many TAFE Institutes cannot retain revenue earned from commercial activities
• governments usually require TAFE Institutes to charge fees at concessional rates to many categories of students
• student fees for mainstream courses bear little relation to the cost of the course
• TAFE is required to comply with far more stringent regulations than corporations law, eg audit acts, public service acts, freedom of information legislation and a wide range of regulations and guidelines applying to public service agencies
• governments require TAFE to operate in rural and remote, high cost locations
• election and by-election commitments commit TAFE Institutes to activities irrespective of costs or demand
• governments require TAFE institutes to deliver training involving uncosted cross-subsidisation from commercial to mainstream activities
• TAFE Institutes have not been provided with adequate financial and management information systems and are required to abide by whole-of-government or departmental approaches
• award conditions applying to the TAFE worforce limit TAFE Institute flexibility

The Chairs of TAFE Institute Councils in South Australia have outlined similar issues as critical for the functioning of TAFE Institutes. They point to:

• policies which deprive Councils of control over costs -eg whole of government activities, compulsory use of EDS data services, outsourcing rules, salary awards and staffing conditions
• reliance on departmental information systems which fail to provide necessary information on a timely and accurate basis
• an avalanche of federal and State policy and legislative changes which are creating anxiety and uncertainty among enterprises and employers.

Key Points

• TAFE Institutes represent an enormous community investment and national asset
• There are services which can only realistically be provided by a public training network
• It is logical to expect a core government service in school, vocational and university education, while promoting diversity and user pays principles
• Outcomes data point to productivity gains by the TAFE system and high levels of client satisfaction
• TAFE Institutes have transformed their operations despite a wide range of barriers resulting from governments' failure to liberalise TAFE management arrangements to keep pace with policy directions in the national VET environment

Intersectoral Considerations:

TAFE Institutes find themselves in a pivotal role between the school and university sectors. Policy makers with an interest primarily in school or university education have traditionally viewed TAFE as a potential contributor to those sectors, often at the neglect of the interests of TAFE students and the vital industry sectors served by TAFE and VET. They regard TAFE as a quarry to be mined to provide programs for schools or universities, rather than as a major education sector vital to the economy and to very many individual Australians.

Too often, TAFE programs which are successful in their own right, serving a distinct client group with an orientation to employable skills, have been looked on as potential contributors to other sector's needs. TAFE para-professional courses, for example, are not designed as first stages of university degrees, although there is sufficient commonality in many to permit transfer of credit. Their main function is to prepare people for middle level operations in commerce and industry, with a focus on high level practical rather than academic skills.

Similarly, there are proposals to utilise TAFE courses in schools without sufficient awareness that these courses are designed to be taught by instructors with substantial industry experience, supported by appropriate level equipment and facilities.

The View from Other Sectors

These views of the TAFE system remain strong as policy makers struggle for an effective vocational alternative in schools and as universities see amalgamation with TAFE Institutes as a means of expanding client base, cash flow and opportunities for commercial exploitation.

Such views marginalise the educational expectations of the one million Australians who enrol each year in TAFE Institutes and the skill needs of the enterprises which employ them on graduation.

It is essential for a balanced pattern of skill development and educational opportunity in the Australian community that TAFE and the VET sector be recognised in policy for what it is: a major sector of education in its own right with a special role as the provider of lifelong learning opportunities for many citizens and the basis for the development of learning organisations and a learning culture for Australia.

TAFE Institutes differ from universities in the academic diversity of their programs, ranging from remedial education through to advanced skill development. They are far more closely connected to industry than universities are or should be, involve employers more directly in curriculum development and more readily customise courses for individual enterprises. Their geographic spread is far more encompassing - 54 Institute campuses throughout South Australia alone.

The Higher Education Interface

Articulation between the two tertiary sectors is important, but important at the margins. TAFE is not primarily a stepping stone towards university qualifications, but an appropriate source of basic and advanced vocational skills. Moreover, as Werner's research has shown, there is a greater movement from the university sector, of both graduates and part-completed undergraduates, to TAFE than the reverse.

TAFE Institutes and universities in South Australia cooperate in a very broad range of areas: research, joint courses, formally articulated courses, transfer of credit arrangements, sharing of facilities, hosting distance education students, joint enrolment mechanisms and a wide array of cooperative arrangements. However, the two sectors have different primary focuses, different client bases, different relations with industry, different curriculum philosophies and, overall, different centres of gravity.

TAFE SA is strongly of the view that continued and enhanced cooperation between the sectors makes a great deal more sense than the subordination of TAFE objectives to university goals and expectations through amalgamations. Modern management principles of transparency and adherence to core business also argue for the preservation of two distinct and specialist sectors.

TAFE SA is also concerned at the persisting imbalance between enrolments, especially of young people, in higher education as compared to vocational education. Although it is difficult to gather comparable data, participation by young people in TAFE and VET is concentrated in shorter courses rather than career preparation programs. Data from the 1996 census indicate a doubling of degree holders in the population over the last decade, with an actual decline in the numbers with vocational qualifications. Overall, it seems that young people are about twice as likely to enrol in higher education as in TAFE or VET career training. This does not seem an appropriate response to labour market realities.

Vocational Education in Schools

Increased emphasis on vocational education in schools may help to counter the low value currently placed by school students and parents on vocational rather than higher education qualifications. The OECD has noted a world wide trend for young people to choose academic rather than vocational courses and argues for breaking down traditional cleavages between the two systems. This in turn means reinforcing the educational component of VOTEC [vocational education] while, at the same time, introducing more applied learning in general education.

In Australia this finding requires a greater emphasis on Mayer style competencies in VET and the introduction of more vocationally relevant education in schools. There is now a wide body of research and experience which suggests that the most valuable work related education in schools, including work experience, is that which supports and reinforces general education objectives.

The provision of specific vocational skills to employment standards in schools is a very difficult task. As the NCVER's evaluation of school based traineeships exemplified, programs to provide vocational qualifications at school turned out to require far more time than had been anticipated and few school based programs moved beyond level 1 competencies.

TAFE Institutes may be able to assist schools in some vocational education programs, but these course should normally be devised and implemented by school educators cognisant of the overall educational objectives of the school curriculum.

Surveys show that TAFE Institutes have met with some success in raising school students' awareness and appreciation of the opportunities available in TAFE. These efforts may be damaged, however, by policy settings which treat intending enrolees as 'factory fodder', whose interests are subordinated to industry's, rather than as students building a portfolio of flexible skills for lifelong employment and citizenship.

Key Points

• Too frequently policy proposals are made about TAFE with the needs of schools and universities in mind, marginalising the more than one million Australians who use TAFE each year.
• Issues of articulation are important, but only at the margin.
• TAFE and universities have developed a wide range of successful cooperative arrangements.
• Cooperation makes more sense than subordination of TAFE to university interests through amalgamations.
• There is a serious imbalance between enrolments of young people in VET and higher education.

Relations with Industry:

TAFE Institutes enjoy extremely close links with industry. Their linkages are forged through daily contact with enterprises, through their specialist support of specific industries and regional economies, and through governance arrangements which mean Institute Councils are overwhelmingly representative of industry and enterprises relevant to the Institutes programs.

The pervasiveness of TAFE/Industry linkages is often not recognised by those not familiar with TAFE operations. Several TAFE campuses actually operate from buildings within industrial establishments. Industry Training bodies have established joint skill centres with TAFE both within Institutes and in stand alone locations. Many TAFE teaching staff operate solely or largely within enterprises and all staff are engaged in continuous industry liaison.

Industry in return has over many years generously made facilities and equipment available to TAFE Institutes, participated in commercial arrangements with TAFE and contributed as the majority partner to curriculum design.

Concern over National VET/Industry Policy

One of the less helpful elements to have emerged in the policy initiatives of the 1990s has been a tendency for central institutions, such as the large business lobby groups, the ACTU and the national Industry Training Advisory Boards (ITABs), funded by ANTA, to claim a dominant role as the voice of industry. It is inherently implausible that these distant bureaucracies would have the grasp of local industry concerns which surface daily in the work of TAFE Institutes. It is also of concern that these central, corporatist bodies essentially ignore other stakeholders in the TAFE system, especially students.

The 1995 Senate Employment, Education and Training Committee Review of the ANTA Agreement expressed concern over both these matters.

The Committee seeks convincing evidence that the ANTA Board and the ITABs are satisfactory mechanisms for ensuring industry's satisfactory involvement. This point is all the more important when seen in the context of ANTA's mission statement of 1994. Not only industry is to be considered, but 'other education sectors' and 'those seeking vocational education and training'. ANTA's structure has given the primary role to the first of these groups, yet it does not seem to be working. By comparison, the other two groups have been neglected.

The 1996 Taylor Review described industry support for the national VET system as 'patchy' and suggested 'cas[ting] the net wider than ITABs when seeking advice on industry needs'. However, the rich local relationships between TAFE Institutes and industry and other stakeholders -not least students- remain ignored in national policy formulation.

Key Points

• TAFE Institutes enjoy an extremely close liaison with industry on a day to day basis and through their governance arrangements.
• These linkages are more meaningful than the ANTA/business lobby nexus which dominates national VET policy.

The Role of TAFE Institutes:

TAFE Institutes remain the core of the Australian vocational education system. They provide the quality underpinning and the breadth of training which allow Australian enterprises to compete on global markets and which encourage individual Australians to develop lifetime careers as skilled and flexible employees, as self-employed business people and as citizens participating fully in the Australian community.

The Institutional Bedrock

As with schools and universities, TAFE provides the institutional bedrock without which no viable vocational education structure could be built. Institution-based education can no more be dispensed with in vocational education than in schools or universities, although of the three sectors TAFE has also taken the most vigorous steps to reach beyond formal institutional boundaries.

These issues were well debated in the College of Education discussion paper. As it argues

being institutionally based should not be seen as dichotomous with on-the-job training. To be institutionally based does not mean being locked into rigid teaching and learning methodologies nor does it mean that resources cannot be taken into industry and the community.

TAFE SA has in fact been a pioneer in basing staff within enterprises, including enterprises interstate, in developing skill centres jointly with industry and more recently in expanding on-line delivery methodologies. In SA, on-line is a means not merely of outreaching from institution to enterprise, but TAFE staff are also located within enterprises to customise on-line delivery within the firm. Nor are these strategies confined to industry training: similar techniques are brought to bear in other TAFE outreaches, for example in remote Aboriginal communities.

As the College of Education goes on to say, while there can be a downside to excessively rigid institutional structures, there is a real purpose to institutional education that cannot be replicated elsewhere.

Institutional education can provide a coherence in educational strategy; the building of learning support mechanisms that are not possible, even desirable, in non-institutional settings; the encouragement of interdisicplinary engagement at staff and student levels; the collection and development of learning resources; and the opportunity for the learner to be a student rather than a trainee

Some areas of education are well suited to an institutional setting: remedial and preparatory education are prime examples. It is also true that advanced and higher level courses, because of their demands on resources and professional staff, will also be normally best provided in institutions

Another activity best done in an educational setting by educational professionals is the development of curriculum, learning resources and teaching strategies. Institutions are also the undisputed experts in distance education and in self-paced learning.

The Return to Lifelong Education

TAFE Institutions and the TAFE system in their present form are the result of the Kangan Inquiry in 1973-74. Myer Kangan and his colleagues wrote at the time of the publication of two seminal reports - the UNESCO (Faure) report Learning to Be on lifelong learning and the OECD's companion volume, Recurrent Education: A Strategy for Lifelong Learning. Both were enthusiastically adopted not only by educators but equally by governments and business groups.

For some time it seemed these reports and concepts had been consigned to history as a transient 70s fashion. The limitations of the narrower perspectives which succeeded them have, however, increasingly become apparent.

Within vocational education internationally, there has been a similar return to an appreciation of the advantages of the lifelong or recurrent education concept. Again, UNESCO has prepared a report by Jacques Delors, former head of the European Commission, revisiting and re-endorsing the Faure Report. The OECD, after a major international project conducted throughout the 1990s, has distilled its findings in a Report, Lifelomg Learning for All.

The OECD argues that

Investment in education and training in pursuit of lifelong learning strategies serves to address..social and economic objectives simultaneously by providing long-term benefits for the individual, the enterprise, the economy and the society more generally. For the individual, lifelong learning emphasises creativity, initiative and responsiveness -attributes which contribute to self-fulfilment, higher earnings and employment, and to innovation and productivity. For the economy, there is a positive relationship between educational attainment and economic growth. Lifelong education strategies ...can play an important role in breaking the cycle of disadvantage and marginalisation and so contribute to social cohesion.

The OECD sees vocational education's role in lifelong learning as providing initial access to the labour market, re-entry possibilities for the unemployed and underemployed and the continuing skill formation of the employed labour force. The Phillips Curran report to ANTA makes essentially the same case for public provision of vocational education:

• initial preparation of the workforce involving a significant component of general education, substantially transferable across industries
• compensation for market failure where there is under-investment in upskilling or reskilling the existing workforce
• deliberate policy intervention as a conscious strategy to accelerate growth of an industry sector or to assist a region experiencing structural change, or to pursue social and equity goals

It is evident that few of these roles would be performed without a publicly supported, institutional vocational education base, especially initial preparation for those not in formal training agreements with employers or the provision of re-entry skills. As well, the Graduate Outcomes survey indicates almost 50 per cent of TAFE graduates who were in the employed workforce did not receive even minimal assistance from their employers and were dependent on convenient and low cost programs of the public TAFE institutions.

Lifelong education as a concept rejects sharp distinctions between different types of adult post school education. Experienced adult educators know that the crucial step, especially for those who have been long away from education, is the first enrolment. Even when this is in a general education course, it is often the first stage of acquiring or re-acquiring employable skills.

The Policy Framework for Lifelong Education

Lifelong education requires a far greater public commitment than the narrow version of intervention in the case of market failure favoured by ANTA. The OECD's review of economic studies of training clearly shows that there will almost certainly be substantial under-provision in a market led system and adds that

Personal development, which can only be ensured through some form of lifelong learning, contributes both to performance and productivity, and to general physical and mental health....In the interests of equity and social cohesion, adult education should be available to all members of the community and not restricted to those working for certain employers.

Public TAFE Institutes are able to provide the basis for a system of recurrent education and lifelong learning, but the policy framework for this provision has been substantially weakened during the 1990s. Overemphasis on training markets rather than educational service provision can only reduce the capacity of TAFE Institutes to provide the learning support and student amenities required for broadly based lifelong education, because in a market led system cost minimisation may become more important than educational quality.

Equally, market processes do not provide incentives for private providers to develop student support facilities and collaboration between public and private providers is diminished by the requirements of competition.

Similarly, competency based training when limited to narrow, vocationally specific competencies works against the principles of lifelong education. The famous German Dual System requires that 40 per cent of training be in general education. The competency framework in Australia needs to mature so that there is greater emphasis on Mayer, generic competencies rather than only on vocational competencies. There is no point in such an evolution, however, without institutions capable of providing a broad based as well as skill specific education.

Key Points

• While there are advantages to on-the-job learning, there are also great benefits in institution based education, and institution based education can be the source of outreach into enterprise and community skill development.
• TAFE Institutes in their current form were based on the concepts of lifelong and recurrent education which emerged from UNESCO and the OECD in the 1970s; there is currently a dramatic resurgence of interest in these concepts, with new reports in Britain, from UNESCO and from the OECD.
• Lifelong education requires a much greater public commitment than the leave-it-to-the-market approaches of the early 1990s and a much greater emphasis on general as well as vocational education.

Governance and Management of TAFE Institutes:

Whatever mix of competitive and community provision is adopted in Australia, there needs to be substantial change to the governance and management of TAFE Institutes.

Decentralisation

First, there needs to be less centralisation. At national level, as raised in the Phillips Curran Report, there needs to be a decision taken that ANTA exists to serve the VET system, not to control it. The knowledge gained by TAFE Institutes (and other VET providers) of the real need of clients -students and enterprises- needs to count more than pronouncements from national industry lobby bodies.

Self-management

Secondly, TAFE Institutes need to become self-managing organisations in the training market and the VET sector. A deliberate process needs to be initiated in which either individual TAFE Institutes or consortia of Institutes can be given the necessary powers of self-governance to compete in the training market or to deliver required performance targets. The form of self-management, especially whether of stand alone Institutes or consortia, should be determined by States on the basis of regional needs.

Balance

Thirdly, governments both at the Ministerial Council level and at State level need to determine the balance they wish to see between market driven and policy driven provision and implement arms' length arrangements, including a genuine purchaser /provider separation, to achieve their objectives through contracts and performance indicators.

TAFE Visibility in National Policy

Fourthly, TAFE Institutes, as the principal provider of VET in Australia, cannot continue to be the invisible partners in national VET policy making. They must be represented on the ANTA Board and in all national forums. Representation for other elements of the VET sector should also be provided. It is not possible to persist with the myth that business represents all VET interests, when the data show that business contributes little to VET funding and is not the major force in decisions to train.

Responsibility of Government

The introduction of Institute self-management and arms' length relationships between public providers and governments is no small task. It will require governments to forego the easy response they have had to demands from various constituencies for specific education and training initiatives. It will require the introduction of transparent management arrangements and the devolution of real authority to providers and their governing bodies.

Governments have travelled a considerable distance in the policy decisions they have taken since they signed the ANTA Agreement in 1992. They have chosen to relinquish, at least in principle, much of the policy direction and management control they previously enjoyed with their TAFE systems. At some stage, these policy decisions, already taken, have to be implemented. To date, decisions such as the purchaser /provider split have been applied only in part. The stage of full implementation cannot be long delayed.

Key Points

• There needs to be less centralisation in the national VET sector and ANTA needs to be recast to serve VET, not to control it.
• TAFE Institutes need to become self-managing organisations in the sector, either as stand alone Institutes or as a self-governing consortium. The final choice need to be made by States reflecting their regional needs.
• Governments need to decide on the balance they wish to strike between market-led provision and policy-driven provision of TAFE services. They need to implement seriously the purchaser /provider split.
• TAFE Institutes must become more visible in national policy making.

Conclusions:

• TAFE Institutes offer an efficient service delivery to clients, mostly individual Australians, who express considerable satisfaction at their educational experience and employment outcomes.
• TAFE is a large and clearly defined sector of education. Policy in relation to TAFE Institutes needs to be determined by the needs of its very large client base, not by the needs of other education sectors.
• The national policy framework developed since the establishment of the Australian National Training Authority in 1993 has insufficiently spelt out a clear role for TAFE Institutes, although they are overwhelmingly the principal source of vocational education in Australia. This largely arises from ambivalence by governments over the balance to be struck between market forces in vocational education and their broader policy objectives.
• Quality and equity have been downgraded in the push to create the appearance of a training market. Recognition frameworks and tendering systems pay no direct regard to whether a provider offers a full education service, including learning support and student amenities. TAFE Institutes offer more than institution based training, but the strengths of Institutes as educational institutions underpins the whole vocational education system.
• Emphasis on narrow vocational competencies rather than the key competencies advocated by the Mayer Report is undermining the quality of vocational education in Australia at a time when the international policy environment has revisited the concepts of lifelong education and flexible skills for life.
• TAFE Institutes not only offer the highest quality of educational service available in the sector. They also have the closest and most widespread relationships with Australian enterprises. Both the educational expertise and industry connections of TAFE are ignored in national policy making.
• Whether the future direction of policy affecting TAFE operations is market or policy led, governments must take action to free TAFE Institutes from the restrictions of public service operation.

References:

Delors, J (Chair) Learning: The Treasure Within. Paris: UNESCO, 1996.

OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) Lifelong Learning for All. Paris. 1996

Dearing, R (Chair). Higher Education and the Learning Society. Leeds: National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education. 1997.

Kennedy, H. Learning Works. Coventry, UK: Further Education Funding Council. 1997

eg, Senge, P. M. The Fifth Discipline: the art and practice of the learning organisation. London: Century Business. 1993.

Kangan, M (Chair) TAFE in Australia. Canberra: AGPS. 1974.

Porter, M. E. The Competitive Advantage of Nations. New York: Free Press. 1990

see, eg, Dowrick, S. A Review of New Theories and Evidence on Economic Growth. Canberra: Centre for Economic Policy research, Australian National University. 1992.

Fooks, D, Ryan, R and Schofield, K Making TAFE Competitive. Canberra: Australian College of Education. 1997.

Deveson, I (Chair) report of the Training Costs Review Committee. Canberra: AGPS, 1990, 9.

Australian Training, 4 (2), 1997.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. Graduate Outcomes, TAFE. Canberra: AGPS. 1995.

Phillips Curran Pty Ltd. Identification of a Vision for Vocational Education and Training. Griffith, ACT. 1997.

Employment and Skills Formation Council. The Australian Vocational Certificate Training System. Canberra: NBEET. 1992, 75.

Curtis et al, Teaching and Learning the Key Competencies in the VET Sector: Research Support. Adelaide: Flinders Institute for the Study of Teaching. 1996, Ch 10.

Misko, J. Transfer. Adelaide: National Centre for Vocational Education Research. 1995.

Report of the Review of the ANTA Agreement. Canberra: AGPS. 1996, 119-120.

ibid., letter of transmittal.

Schofield, K. Radical Surgery or Palliative Care? The Future of TAFE. Paper presented to the NCVER National Conference, VET Markets, Adelaide, July, 1997, 4-5.

Werner, M Graduating from Uni to TAFE. Australian Training Review, No 22, Mar/Apr/May 1997, 10-12.

OECD. Vocational Education and Training: Towards Coherent Policy and Practice. Paris, 1994, 314.

Ryan R. J. Vocational Education in Schools. Adelaide: National Centre for Vocational Education research. 1997.

ibid., 10.

Australian Senate, Employment, Education and Training References Committee. Report of the Inquiry into the Australian National Training Authority. Canberra: AGPS. 1995, 43.

Report of the Review of the ANTA Agreement, 72.

Fooks et al., op.cit., para 4.11

ibid., paras 4.12 to 4.14.

Faure, E. Learning to Be. Paris: UNESCO. 1972.

OECD. Recurrent Education: A Strategy for Lifelong Learning. Paris. 1973.

OECD. Lifelong Learning for All, 15.

Phillips Curran Pty Ltd, 11.

OECD, Lifelong Learning for All, 154-155.

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