Vic skills reform review attacked

Impact on regional Victoria has not been assessed says vice-channcellor A review into Victoria’s skills reforms has been attacked for its failure to assess the program’s impact in regional Victoria. University of Ballarat vice-chancellor David Battersby says the review provides “no insight whatsoever” into the impact of the reforms in the regions and in their TAFE communities. Writing in today’s Campus Review he labels the Ernst & Young review “disappointing” and of doubtful usefulness. He highlights the authors’ admission that there “was little quantitative data to inform the review” and that ”the impact of the reforms was still largely unknown to stakeholders”. “This is an amazing admission and one which must cast doubt over the usefulness of the Ernst & Young review,” Battersby says. Ernst & Young was contracted by the Victorian Brumby Government to undertake a mid-term review of its four-year overhaul of the state’s TAFE and vocational education and training system, launched in August 2008. In response to its recommendations, the government moved recently to exempt apprentices from the controversial up-skilling criteria that meant students enrolled in courses lower than their highest qualification were expected to pay full fees. The government will also exempt “career shifters” from the up-skilling criterion if they are training in skills shortage areas, or if they are considered disadvantaged in the labour market. Professor Battersby says these moves are to be welcomed. However, he says the review failed to address or respond to criticism of the reforms reliance on competition between private and public institutions to deliver more value and places. “While the reforms might work well where there are large population centres and where there is real choice, diversity, opportunity and competition between private and public providers, the argument was advanced that these situations often do not exist in many regional and rural communities,” he says. “What might work in Melbourne may not be appropriate in Stawell, Mildura or Morwell.” Professor Battersby says it was understood the mid-term review would be “sensitive to the [reforms’]impact on regional Victoria and on regional labour markets”. Yet he says the Ernst and Young report only mentions the word regional just five times in the 21-page report. By example Professor Battersby points to a “cursory reference” that states “regional TAFEs have experienced more challenges in transitioning to the new VET market than metropolitan TAFEs” and that “as a group, regional TAFEs generally have smaller enrolments and fewer financial resources than their metropolitan counterparts”. “These are the only references to the impact of the reforms on regional Victoria,” he says. “What we know already is that, on average, students completing secondary education in regional and rural Victoria have a one in three chance of participating in post-secondary education or training compared with their metropolitan counterparts. “What we wanted to know was whether the reforms were in any way redressing these trends.” He says the result of the Ernst and Young review is that stakeholders in regional Victoria are “none the wiser” about the impact of the reforms in the regions. “Some encouragement can be taken from the state government’s response to the review in that there will be additional funding and policy recalibration with respect to apprentices, occupations experiencing critical skills shortages and VET Fee-Help arrangements,” he says. “However, those in regional Victoria will undoubtedly express extreme disappointment with what the Ernst and Young review was unable to tell them mid-way through the implementation of these reforms.” See related story Fees a fault line in model VET system