Time’s up for Tasmania Tomorrow

Tasmania’s three-way tussle continues over education funding, but the combatants agree that Tasmania Tomorrow is very yesterday. It’s back to the future for the island state. The Tasmania Tomorrow reforms have unravelled, with two of the three post-Year 10 educational authorities to be brought back under the ambit of the state education department. The controversial reforms – which saw three separate statutory authorities established to run senior schools and TAFEs – had appeared doomed if Labor failed to retain government in its own right at the March election (CR, 16.02.09). The reforms had been designed to bolster the state’s traditionally low retention rates by giving students clearer post-Year 10 options. TAFE Tasmania was dissolved at the end of 2008 and replaced by two authorities: Tasmania Polytechnic for school students and their older counterparts with a vocational bent, and Tasmania Skills Institute for enterprise-focused training such as apprenticeships and traineeships. Six of the state’s senior colleges – which cater to Year 11 and 12 students – became campuses of Tasmania Academy, with the remaining few scheduled to join up over the next year or so. But the reforms were opposed by both the Liberals and Greens, which claimed they were too expensive and denied colleges their own identities. Liberal education and skills spokesperson Michael Ferguson said that a year into the new system, student attendance figures had deteriorated and there was no data available on the crucial retention rates. The Australian Education Union (AEU) also opposed the new system, highlighting coordination and teething problems and claiming there was no evidence to support such massive changes. In early May, after the new Labor-Greens coalition assumed government, Ferguson tabled legislation to abolish the system. But before the Bill could be debated the Polytechnic’s founding chair, Dr Michael Vertigan, resigned, and the Skills Institute said it wanted to pull out of the system. Then, at the end of May, the Greens said preliminary data from the Tasmanian Qualifications Authority indicated a disturbing decline in student achievement. “Under the so-called reformed Tasmania Tomorrow system this data indicates that the mean Year 12 points score had plummeted by an approximate 20 per cent,” said education spokesperson Paul O’Halloran. In early June, just before Parliament resumed, education minister Lin Thorp announced she was “refining” the model in line with a deal struck with the Greens. She said the Tasmanian Academy and Tasmanian Polytechnic would be brought under the education department, with principals reinstated to run the colleges. “We are not returning to the former structures. These changes are a response to issues of identity, collaboration and implementation raised during consultations,” she said. “The community has also found it difficult to make the transition from the well understood local college to statewide organisations. Staff cultural change was always the most difficult aspect of the reforms.” Thorp said the academy and polytechnic boards would be abolished, while the Skills Institute would continue as a standalone statutory authority. She said an implementation taskforce would be established to expedite changes for the 2011 school year, with an external review of progress from 2011. Premier and former education minister David Bartlett said it was a good outcome. “This is the first big test for Labor and the Greens working closely together to provide strong, stable government,” he said. The Greens, Liberals and AEU cautiously welcomed the new arrangements. AEU state manager Chris Lane said the key outstanding issue was the sustainability of the Skills Institute, with its future as a viable publicly funded training provider jeopardised by its standalone status. “While we welcome commitments about ongoing government funding and its continued status as a statutory authority; the long-term answer is clear: recombine the Polytechnic and Skills Institute and allow for more efficient and effective use of the resources of both organisations,” Lane said. O’Halloran said the Greens had got most – but not all – of what they wanted. “The key outstanding issue is restoring the TAFE brand and adult education,” he said. If the parties were more or less reconciled to a tomorrow without Tasmania Tomorrow, bickering resumed over the $1.25 billion education allocation in this month’s state budget. Shadow treasurer Peter Gutwein said $23 million had been cut from the education department. Thorp said Gutwein had done his maths wrong, and that education expenditure had actually increased by $72 million. But her coalition partner sided with the Opposition. “This is the wrong direction for the education budget, which is already under extreme pressure with reforms to the Tasmania Tomorrow process,” O’Halloran said. “Too often we ask educational bodies to engage in change processes and almost invariably do not fund the change with proper resources, staff or both. It happened with Tasmania Tomorrow and we cannot afford for it to happen again with the negotiated restructured post-Year 10 model.” Notwithstanding whether it’s gone up or down, the budget offers relatively little to VET. It includes an extra $400,000 a year to increase transport allowances for apprentices and trainees, $100,000 to boost hospitality industry skills and $11 million for a four-year adult literacy strategy.