TAFE: New powers for ASQA
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 129 No 2, 28 March 2024, page 25.
On 7 February, the Albanese government introduced new legislation to tackle unscrupulous and non-genuine vocational education and training (VET) providers and to improve the integrity of the nation’s VET sector.
The National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Strengthening Quality and Integrity in Vocational Education and Training No. 1) Bill 2024, has been introduced to respond to the integrity and quality issues highlighted by a series of high-level reviews of educational quality, particularly in relation to international education and the visa system.
The bill empowers the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) to take decisive action against the minority of RTOs that are engaged in fraudulent activity, or are circumventing regulatory requirements. It also enables ASQA to take swift action in deterring and removing those RTOs, and applies greater scrutiny and constraints to new RTOs seeking to enter the VET sector. The types of false and misleading conduct that ASQA can target are expanded through offence and civil penalty provisions, and the bill provides for long overdue increases to the penalties applicable.
ROGS reveals worrying stats
While students, industry and the broader Australian community will benefit from getting rid of dodgy providers, the 2024 Productivity Commission “Report into Government Services” (ROGS) has released worrying financial statistics from 2022.
The ROGS analyses past expenditure and services provided by state and territory governments. The most recent report identified that, in 2022, overall government recurrent expenditure per annual hour fell slightly from 2019, with most jurisdictions receiving a higher rate in 2019 or 2021, leading to a slight fall in 2022.
Queensland was the second lowest funded state or territory when it comes to recurrent funding per annual hour of training.