Andrew Robb should learn the facts before he opens his mouth about TAFE training

Andrew Robb is one of those hard-right political conservatives who share a trait with our Prime Minister – he knows what needs to be done, and he's not going to waste any time learning the facts before he spells it out.

So the newly appointed Federal Minister for Vocational and Further Education, in an interview published by The Australian yesterday under the heading “Plan for TAFE to go into worksites”, said TAFE colleges would offer flying squads of teachers for workplace classrooms under a government blueprint for education reform.

“Under his plan, TAFE colleges would become more entrepreneurial. They will be allowed to keep profits from innovative course offerings and send trainers to work sites rather than forcing employers to let their staff have time off to travel to education centres,” The Australian reported.

“The whole four-walls, classroom mentality of TAFE has to change," he told the newspaper.

“It's about being able to work with local industry on designing programs which can be delivered in the workplace, at a price.”

I've got news for Andrew Robb. TAFE in New South Wales made those changes years ago. And I believe they're matched by other Technical and Further Education systems throughout Australia.

I emailed a friend, Suzanne Fleming – who is also an occasional mentor for my blogging – and she assured me that TAFE in New South Wales has been going into workplaces for years. Suzanne, I should say, knows what she's talking about.

For almost three years, she was the State Manager for the TAFE/Workcover Retraining Project – a major project to retrain injured workers. The program had an annual budget of two million dollars and it was delivered at all TAFE NSW institutes, at a total of 17 campuses.

In an email a while back, she told me: “It was the first big fee-for-service program TAFE became involved in. Now they do much larger ones, but this one broke new ground.”

One of Suzanne's friends helped organise TAFE's delivery of a meat-cutting training module for Australia's most successful supermarket chain, which had decided it did not need fully qualified tradesmen butchers for much of its meat preparation.

TAFE now offers modules instead of subjects. Butchery workers may take a module covering basic meat-cutting skills, but they could go on to complete all the modules to receive recognition for the full meat trades course.

Another TAFE project delivers life and job skills for people released from prison on parole. The list goes on and on, but you get the idea.

Perhaps TAFE could now prepare a program to correct the ignorance of newly appointed Federal government ministers.

It could be delivered in Parliament House, and of course, for a fee – which would have to be substantial, if the program was to be good enough turn “born to rule” conservatives into open-minded administrators.

You can read The Australian's report here:
http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21472399-12332,00.html?from=public_rss

And for evidence that an alive and aware TAFE already offers tailored courses to individual businesses, with the training available in the clients' premises, check these two links.
http://www.tafeplus.com/working.htm
http://www.tafeplus.com/about.htm

Readers might also note that two posts down in this blog, I republish Suzanne's passionate defence of what TAFE now achieves in turning out fully prepared, job-ready people.