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❛Cost-cutting in TAFEs►“A substantial push towards online learning is resultingin teaching staff becoming ‘redundant’ and students notnecessarily gaining greatly from self-paced learning.”►“Cancelling any less than fully subscribed courses(particularly short industrial skills courses).”►“More and more online delivery and using sessionalinstead of ongoing staff to deliver and coordinate as it ischeaper.”❜“Staff who once had at leastone hour to coordinate classes andoversee compliance no longer have it.Staff are really under pressure,” onemember said.The AEU has vowed to exposethe extent of the shaving of teachinghours by institutes, a practice that hasbecome endemic. TAFEs are fundedby Skills Victoria to provide a nominalnumber of contact hours, but thereare no checks on the number of hoursactually delivered.Teachers report that they havebeen instructed to cut those hours byas much as 70%, with the remainingtime delivered through online work orself-directed study.Members said the reforms weredamaging the quality of education andtraining that students received. Some85% of teachers said they did nothave enough time to support studentsto the level required.Some 68% said the cuts in contacthours made it hard for students tosuccessfully complete their courses,while 53% said they were underpressure to pass students who mightnot be competent. A bare majority —52% — believed student needs weretaken into account in course design.One of the first acts of the newState Government was to reintroduceconcession rates for trainees agedunder 25, and Skills MinisterPeter Hall is now reviewing fees andcharges in the VET sector. The AEU’ssubmission to the review calls for thefees to be reduced even further.Greg Barclay, AEU deputy vicepresident for TAFE, said: “We want tosee changes to the current fundingmodel, including a boost to the overalllevel of Victorian Government funding,and better access to concessionplaces for students.“Education is about long-termfutures for individuals and communities.It should never be aboutshort-term budgets and profits.”◆Download the full survey results atwww.aeuvic.asn.au/tafe_survey (PDF).Have the Securing Jobs for Your Future reforms (contestablefunding, more complicated enrolment procedures, etc) affected youradministrative workload?❛Messages to the minister►“(We need) more concessions for all students, not justunder 25. Maximum fees should be abolished, stop shavingoff hours from nominal hours, (and) reduce admin for teachersas the reality is there is less time for teaching and beingeffective.”►“I work with students from disadvantaged backgrounds.With the funding attached to the student, if for medicalreasons they can no longer attend, we lose the funding andthen the class that was viable at the beginning of the yearbecomes threatened.”►“Take away the eligibility restrictions for a governmentfundedplace and simplify the fee structure. You cannot expecta flexible workforce and new job creation if people cannotretrain in an alternate industry to their original qualification.”►“Come and live in the country. We have had drought for over10 years, fires, floods in the past three years and a 200%increase in private providers who are not audited as we are.”►“Not only have you given us a funding system and overthe-topauditing to grind us into the ground, you have allowedopen slather for the independent RTOs to do as they please.“They joke to us about all the ways we are tied up in red tapewhile they can happily run classes with seven people and beaccountable for a third of what we are.”►“One of our students has an arts degree from the early1990s which didn’t lead to work, and has been a single mumfor the past 10 years. She has an aptitude to do well in ourcourse, but will not take on diploma level studies because shehas to pay full fees.“Why would you pay $7000 for a diploma when highereducation is cheaper?”►“Please minister, listen to the facts as they are presented toyou by teachers such as myself: we are in the best positionto evaluate these reforms because we are dealing with theconsequences daily.“We care about our students, we care about education and wecare for the future of Australia. This is not the way to achievethe goals of educating and training people for the future. Let’sgo back to the way things were before the reforms wreckedTAFE education.❜“Education should not be viewed as a moneymakingenterprise; it is an investment in our people and future.”Please choose the most appropriate response to the statement:The Securing Jobs for Your Future reforms have had a negativeeffect on the quality of teaching and learning at my TAFE.featurewww.aeuvic.asn.au 13