TAFE is bleeding to death – slowly – with ongoing reductions
to their budgets, finding a full time TAFE teacher is almost like finding a
unicorn!
TAFE NSW has always been a fantastic place for education,
from trade’s to diplomas and pathways to work, regional NSW has relied on the
TAFE system to deliver programs for our young people and people interested in
returning to work or changing career.
The NSW Government has been pouring money into private
providers and for profit organisations that are benefiting from new income
sources and directly challenging the bread and butter courses that have
traditionally been provided by TAFE.
Privatisation by stealth. This is a terrible situation for regional areas
such as the South Coast were our youth unemployment rates are some of the state’s
highest. We need to keep and refund our TAFFE system to make it useful for
training people for the services in the region. Around 60% of the South Coast
lives on fixed income and we are a socio-economically challenged area, all but
completely reliant on the private vehicle for transport. It makes no sense to
force our people to travel long distances to train at TAFE as travel costs are
often prohibitive.
In 2014 The Greens
put forward a Bill that sought to stop expanding funding for private
training and restore TAFE’s budget however that was defeated. We don’t want NSW
TAFE to end up like Victoria were only 27% of training is provided by TAFE.
It’s bad for our people and bad for our economy. The Greens need your help to
take this fight into the election and tell all candidates that TAFE is worth
saving.
(Submitted and printed in the New Bush Telegraph Feb 2015)
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