THE NSW Teachers Federation wants a guarantee from the state government there will be no cuts to teacher and backroom jobs in TAFE NSW.
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However they fear back-office jobs will be cut and campuses will be sold in a major restructure “and modernisation” of TAFE.
NSW Minister for Skills John Barilaro calls it a "once-in-a-generation reform".
The restructure will see 10 autonomous TAFE institutes merged into a single, multi-campus entity and a new digital education headquarters created in regional NSW to deliver more online and in-workplace training.
The moves are designed to expand TAFE's reach and reverse a huge decline in student enrolments.
It comes after years of turmoil in the vocational education sector where state government reforms and funding instability have been blamed for driving tens of thousands of students walking away from TAFE and leading to the loss of 5000 jobs.
The federation’s TAFE organiser, Mr Rob Long, says the government is not dealing with the real future for TAFE and its students.
The number of students enrolled in government-funded vocational education in NSW has plummeted by 86,300 in the past year, according to research from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER).
Mr Long said the Baird government is making vocational education unaffordable for many students.
"There has been a dramatic reduction in the number of students participating in the guaranteed and income-funded vocational education places, from 2012 there were 539,000 students in government-subsidised places. In September 2015 there were 255,781.’’
Mr Long says he will fight for Riverina Institute of TAFE jobs.
‘’We assume with a restructure of that size, there will be job cuts," Mr Long said.
"I again will insist there are no teacher cuts in Riverina, but already there have been redundancies in Western Institute and we call on the government to guarantee no more teachers are lost."
A TAFE NSW spokesperson said the plan had given it a direction
“We now have the green light to get on and do what we need to do to deliver a strong, modern and more competitive TAFE NSW to provide high quality, industry-relevant training for the jobs of tomorrow.’’
