Funding for the future

23 October 2023

Funding a future-focused workforce means funding a diverse and inclusive TAFE with equity front and centre and Fee-Free TAFE is a small part of the solution.

The Australian Government has taken the lead on Fee-Free TAFE by providing $493 million as part of the $1 billion 12-month Skills Agreement established in partnership with state and territory governments. This partnership has provided 180,000 Fee-Free TAFE and vocational educational places for 2023. An additional $414.1 million has been committed for 300,000 TAFE and vocational Fee-Free places from January 2024 over the five-year National Skills Agreement.

Fee-Free training places are based on national priority industries, these priority industries include the care industry (aged care, childcare, health care and disability care), technology and digital, hospitality and tourism, construction, agriculture and sovereign capability.

Priority groups that will be targeted to fill these Fee-Free places include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, young people aged 17-24, people receiving income support payments, unpaid carers, women facing economic insecurity, women undertaking study in non-traditional fields, people with lived experience of disability and certain categories of visa holders.

Minister for Skills and Training Brendan O’Connor said on ABC Sydney Radio that the take-up has exceeded government expectations: “Across the economy, around a third of those courses that have been taken up are in the care economy, disability care, aged care, childcare, areas where the labour supply is in much demand. And there are other areas too; 20,000 at least in construction, 17,000 in Information Technology (IT). One-third of the courses are also in regional areas of the country and 60 per cent of the enrollees are women. So, it’s been a really, really great take-up. We’ve met our targets well in advance of our goal, and as you said, we’ve exceeded 180,000 enrolments and hit 214,000 and we are now looking beyond this year.”

In August 2023, the Prime Minister’s Office released data that demonstrated the initial take-up of Fee-Free places in the first six months of the scheme nationally was 214,300 – 35,000 more than expected in the entire first year of the program.

Demographically significant enrolments came from priority cohorts including disadvantaged and in-need Australians, with enrolments including 50,849 job seekers (23.7 per cent), 15,269 people with disability (7.1 per cent) and 6,845 First Nations Australians (3.2 per cent). Not surprisingly, due to the feminised care industry being the major priority industry targeted for training, women make up the majority (60.2 per cent) of enrolments, with close to 130,000 women taking on a qualification under the program. More than a third of Fee-Free enrolments (34.1 per cent) were in geographically inner and outer regional areas.

Pathways for support

This additional funding and Fee-Free places will not immediately fully address the lasting damage to TAFE caused by the failed marketisation and contestable funding policy model settings of the previous government, but it does provide a much-needed entry pathway for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and those from culturally diverse backgrounds.

In addition to ongoing funding of Fee-Free places, funding of TAFE’s wrap-around services are imperative to the success of the project, as well as programs to support literacy and numeracy such as Western Australia’s CAVSS and USIQ, which involves a literacy or numeracy lecturer team-teaching with the vocational lecturer, or free access to foundational studies.

Ensuring student success for people with English as an additional language is key to the ongoing success and sustainability of the Fee-Free initiative if it is to address skills shortages present and future. Funding the development of a diverse and inclusive TAFE sector that reflects the diversity of modern-day Australia through strategic initiatives is essential to ready Australia’s workforce of the future – and if we are to be a modern country that learns from the past and 65,000 years of knowledge of the land, water and air, then this strategy must centre Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as Australia’s First Peoples and the unique perspectives and knowledge that First Nations Australians bring.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students participating in vocational education and training (VET) have a right to be comfortable and proud of their First Peoples’ cultural identity. TAFE has long been a place for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to seek education and training, and as more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people take up study, there is an even greater need for culturally appropriate education and cultural competency training for teachers.

The 2021 census showed an increase in the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders between the ages of 20 and 64 who had gained qualification Certificate III training or above – from 35 per cent in 2011, to 42 per cent in 2016 and to 48 per cent or 182,620 people in 2021.

Representation and retention

As educational institutions have realised the importance of providing an educational ecosystem that develops learning experiences that celebrate and promote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, support must also be given to teachers to upskill and access cultural competency training. TAFE teachers are asked to provide a culturally safe, inclusive and welcoming learning environment, and they are responsible for nurturing this environment through their attitudes, behaviours and their cultural competency/responsiveness, oftentimes with insufficient support and training.

The diversity of culturally responsive strategies to engage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in the TAFE learning environment requires a level of funding to provide an appropriate level of cultural competency training to all teachers currently teaching in the TAFE system.

Whilst the provision of Fee-Free places provides a pathway into TAFE, proper funding of wrap-around services supports retention of students from priority groups, the employment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers and those from other diverse backgrounds creates a safe environment for those students, and is another critical issue for investment in a secure workforce.

This can be achieved via the development of a future-focused TAFE workforce strategy drawing in those already qualified and skilled educators that have left the sector due to the unreliable casualisation of the workforce and via the equipping of all TAFE teachers with an AQF 6 qualification or higher, in adult or tertiary education by providing free and subsidised Certificate IV TAE or Diploma qualification.

Why diversity matters

Bringing cohorts traditionally excluded from meaningful workforce participation not only benefits communities economically through financial participation, but also fosters innovation, alleviates skills shortages and creates more stable and inclusive workplaces, which typically leads to happier and more productive employees. Internationally, direct targeting of those from diverse backgrounds with inclusion initiatives has seen a boost in employment for these cohorts and the filling of those hard-to-recruit-for roles in industries such as the caring industry.

Management expert Michalle E. Mor Barak’s longitudinal research highlighted in her renowned and since updated 2005 book Managing Diversity Toward a Globally Inclusive Workplace found diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI) has also seen a “burgeoning specialization within business, governmental, and nonprofit organizations” seeing professionals within this sector moving from within the human resources realm into specific roles across skills areas as a core business practice to achieve an array of goals, including profitability and sustainability.

Disrupting the skills shortages that are recognised globally as one of the greatest challenges for organisations, and just as providing safe and inclusive workplaces encourages greater workplace participation, safe and inclusive education also encourages skills to be taken up.

More than educational outcomes

The stakes are high for student success. For Aboriginal and Torres Islander people, student success is not only about obtaining knowledge and education and then being about going out to get a job to participate in society economically, it’s about the bigger picture, it’s about health, wellbeing and happiness, it’s about pride and it’s about everything that will come from that point on.

Studies have shown that participation in adult education indirectly benefits physical and mental health by improving social capital and connectedness, health behaviour, skills and employment outcomes.

Adult education participation is also proven to be even more beneficial to the health and social outcomes of those from marginalised and disadvantaged groups including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Longitudinal studies show that adults who participate in post-school learning engage in healthier behaviours, including increased amounts of physical exercise and improved social and emotional wellbeing.

It is evident that to achieve positive outcomes through Closing the Gap initiatives intersecting policy approaches must be considered. For First Nations communities, our experiences are not siloed. They are intrinsically connected through our shared histories and lived experiences of colonial systems and structures, including the educational systems and structures that we must navigate.

The provision of entry pathways and adult education through TAFE or other vocational education options is therefore not only providing education and training, it is also more broadly improving the health of First Nations individuals and communities in the process.

By Debbie Morgan-Frail (AEU Federal Aboriginal Education Officer).