The federal government’s Fee-Free TAFE initiative has been an enormous success, with the latest data showing the enrolment target has been significantly exceeded and the program remaining within budget.
The figures show that fee-free TAFE has attracted far more than 180,000 enrolments in its first six months, meaning the program has hit its targets six months ahead of schedule.
The Member for Werriwa, Anne Stanley, said that enrolment figures for fee-free TAFE continued to climb and showed that Australians were hungry to re-train and plug vital skill shortages.
“Labor’s fee-free TAFE is helping Australians to acquire new skills, and to access well-paid jobs,” Ms Stanley said.
“More than 214,000 Australians have now enrolled in a course, and will get the skills they need, and our economy needs, for the future.”
Women make up over 60 percent of enrolments, with more than 35 percent of total enrolments being in critical parts of our care sector.
Over 15,000 people with disability have enrolment and almost 7,000 Indigenous Australians.
Ms Stanley has also welcomed the launch of the government’s Community Language Schools grant program.
The $15 million investment will support kids learning a language other than English.
“Our community is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse in Australia, which is why it is so important that young children are supported in learning the languages of their parents and grandparents,’’ she said.
“I am proud to be part of an Albanese Labor Government that is committed to supporting and strengthening our multicultural society through initiatives such as the Community Language Schools grant program.
“This grant program is a great opportunity for community language schools in Werriwa looking to expand access and to provide a greater quality of learning to kids learning a new language.”
All core education across all levels, primary, tertiary and university needs to be free of fees. The only place for a fee based content is for commercial and international students. This is the measure of a community aspiring towards excellence. The essential element must always be equity of access, no matter the background or financial status of its people.
It will be interesting to see the results of this experiment, which is a repeat of the previous disastrous Whitlam experiment of the 1970s’, particularly for Colleges of Advanced Education and TAFE. That scheme turned out to be an enormous waste of taxpayers’ funds. Initial demand was high and placed an enormous strain on infrastructure that could not cope. Sadly withing a few months, the student “dropout rate” was just as enormous. It will be interesting to see the results after 12 months.
I was a TAFE teacher at the time and experienced it all before, anything totally “free” which it isn’t as taxpayers pay for it all, is not appreciated to the same extent as paying a moderate Administration fee, which was introduced by NSW Premier Nick Greiner, it worked well and provided an incentive for students to “get their moneys worth” which sadly Premier Bob Carr raised astronomically in subsequent years reaching unaffordable fee levels.