Six in 10 fee-free TAFE places have been taken up by women since the program started in January 2023.
This is a great result, given Jobs and Skills Australia’s estimate that around 40 per cent of new jobs in the next decade will require a VET qualification.
Women are not only enrolling in courses that cover skill shortages across the already female-dominated care economy; they are also enrolling in typically male-dominated courses, like those required for electricians and various other roles involved in construction.
However, only 13 per cent of those who have started a fee-free TAFE course since January 2023 have completed their course.
So clearly the program isn’t working and should be axed!
Such is what the Coalition appears to be suggesting, having voted against a continuation of the program in the final weeks of parliament back in March, when Senator Sussan Ley declared, “If you don’t pay for something, you don’t value it.”
Now, during an election campaign in which the Coalition and Labor are focused on housing supply, Shadow Liberal Education Minister Sarah Henderson has declared that the fee-free TAFE idea isn’t working because just 100,000 of the 600,000 who started courses since January 2023 have completed them.
Her comments have been described as being “caught on camera” in reports today, but she made them in front of a group of voters in Geelong and should expect that things can and likely will be recorded. The Liberal frontbencher is heard saying in the video uploaded to social media: “The free TAFE policy, I am sorry. It’s just not working. I am trying to be polite. But the free TAFE policy has cost this country $1.5 billion.”
We need less politeness and more respect and appreciation for the fact that most of those 500,000 people who have enrolled but not yet completed their courses are likely working hard to get it done. And if students do drop out, why not consider finding out and addressing what’s not working for them?
It’s April 2025; the program commenced in January 2023. Not all students who’ve taken places did so in January 2023. Even if they did, should they be disgraced as “not valuing” the opportunity, simply because they have not yet finished the course?
The average Certificate I and II course takes between six months and a year, while higher certificates can take up to two years and apprenticeships up to four years. Diplomas take two to three years. Should we be so concerned that we haven’t seen more students completing these courses? Does ‘free’ education mean students should be expected to learn as quickly as possible, regardless of what else they have going on?
AEU Federal President Correna Haythorpe said that introducing these free TAFE places has been ” life-changing” for students. It has significantly reduced financial barriers to pursuing vocational education and provided opportunities to explore different career pathways.
TAFE is vital for addressing the skill shortages across the trades necessary in construction. Both Labor and the Coalition have big plans for addressing the housing supply, either through building more houses (Labor) or building the infrastructure required for more houses (the Coalition). How do we make this happen without addressing current skill shortages now and well into the future?
As Correna Haythorpe notes on noting the TAFE program’s broader impacts beyond individual students: “You can’t build homes without tradies, and you can’t train tradies if you rip the funding out of TAFE.
“Free TAFE is the most effective way to skill the workforce needed to build the homes people are crying out for. Abolishing it is not just bad policy, it’s a direct threat to Australia’s skills shortages and economic future.
One could argue that funding TAFE places is excellent value for money, even if students take longer than expected to complete courses and even if such fee-free places experience a dropout rate along the way.
Indeed, it could even be an opportunity for the Coalition to differentiate itself on skills education, compared with Labor: a place to highlight the opportunity to get people trained quickly in practical skills needed now.
Instead, the Coalition has provided yet more “DOGE” fodder for Labor, with Jason Clare quick to jump on the opportunity to highlight “cuts” and suggest that they’ll move to cutting public schools’ next, all so Dutton “can pay for his $600 billion nuclear reactors.”
Let’s give students a chance to keep learning, before accusing them of “dropping out” of courses because they are provided free.
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