- The Guardian
- Issue #2126
Photo: Anna Pha.
The country’s largest union, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF), has welcomed the Albanese government’s commitment to expanding fee-free TAFE courses.
ANMF Federal Secretary Annie Butler said enduring funding for free TAFE study would help address skills shortages in the nursing and aged care workforces and save students thousands of dollars a year in TAFE course fees.
The union says TAFE courses have proven to be a success in providing students with ‘hands-on’ training and placements in relevant healthcare settings, helping build the nation’s nursing and aged care workforce, to meet the needs of our growing, ageing population.
“We’ve been delighted that, so far, over 300,000 women have enrolled in fee-free courses across various sectors, including nursing, aged care, and disability services,” said Butler.
“In a cost-of-living crisis, the Albanese government’s commitment to continue with free TAFE courses, will save a student nurse thousands of dollars a year in course fees. For example, in Queensland, a student enrolled in a Diploma of Nursing course would save almost $16,000.
“We need to urgently grow the next generation of high-quality health and aged care workers and removing cost-barriers like these will continue to attract students into care industries which are still struggling to find suitably-trained staff.
“Fee-free TAFE courses will help recruit new enrolled nurses into the profession and deliver a pipeline of suitably-trained job-ready workers and the ANMF commends the government on its commitment to supporting the health and aged care workforce.”
More broadly, reductions in funding for vocational education such as TAFE are both a cause and a consequence of the decline in participation in programs, contributing to a damaging cycle of cumulative causation: reduced enrolments allow governments to further cut funding, which in turn further damages the quality of vocational training, and further reduces the incentive for students to enrol (and undermining the confidence of employers in the whole system).
Continued collapse in enrolments and 8 years of declining apprenticeship completions make it very clear: Australia’s domestic skills pipeline is in disarray. This has implications for whether Australia will have the right workforce with the right skills for the future economy.
TAFE and the VET system are critical to supporting millions of Australians to access training, facilitating crisis-accelerated employment transitions, and meeting skills shortages.
