Undersold sector

TAFE struggles for a place in policy wish-lists. And intellectual snobbery – even among the true believers – could be part of the problem. Labor MPs were crazy about credit unions in decades gone by, former Prime Minister Paul Keating told a forum of Victorian TAFE chiefs last week. “But if you tried to get them as keen about TAFE, you couldn’t form the same commitments,” Keating told the Victorian TAFE Association forum. “You would think your average federal MP could have empathy and links with the local TAFE. Of course, many do – but I still think we’ve got a long way to go in lifting the standing, understanding, status and value of VET.” Keating said he’d always had an interest in VET, “partly because I went there myself. I undertook a leaving certificate at the Bankstown Technical College”. He said he’d expected the same from his Labor colleagues, suggesting he’d assumed “a natural interest in TAFE” in the party with working class roots. “I think it’s generally true, though it might not be completely true, that within the Labor caucus there was more knowledge of the TAFE sector – and perhaps more empathy with it – than there was in the Coalition. “But there wasn’t the kind of impetus you would expect, to see it lifted up in some sort of equal engagement with the tertiary sector.” Keating said TAFE was an “undersold sector”. “I don’t know if you call it intellectual snobbery. They’re very interested in tertiary education, but not as interested in vocational education. “This is why, as Prime Minister, I tried to move towards some sort of national system of funding … which had a better balance, let’s say a more even quality, across the states.” Tags: VET