Setches called on the government to put in place measures to increase completion rates to help address Victoria’s skill shortages and tackle the housing crisis.
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The government last month spruiked Victoria’s TAFE completion rates, but the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions only promoted the top 20 courses.
Coalition skills and training spokeswoman Bridget Vallence said the full picture for completion rates was astonishing.
“Labor has no chance of fulfilling its promise to build 80,000 new homes each year with so few students finishing their TAFE courses in building and construction,” she said.
“Labor has failed to address the emerging crisis in Victoria’s TAFE system and Victorians are paying the price.”
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But Victoria University associate professor Peter Hurley, who specialises in education policy, said low completion rates weren’t necessarily a sign of policy failure.
“It might be that students have got what they needed from a course by completing a few units. Lowering the barriers for entry by removing cost can have huge benefits,” Hurley said.
In response to a series of questions from The Age, a Victorian government spokesperson said free TAFE courses with the lowest completion rates were often related to the building industry because students were regularly invited to undergo apprenticeships before they had completed their studies.
“The latest data shows that students commencing their free TAFE courses in 2019 onwards – when free TAFE was introduced – had a four-year completion rate of 53.7 per cent, which is 12.8 per cent higher than the four-year national average for domestic university students in the same time period,” the spokesperson said.
“Since 2014, we have invested $4 billion to repair Victoria’s broken TAFE system, which was brought to its knees by the former Liberal government, who sacked TAFE teachers, shut down campuses and let the system crumble.”
The federal Productivity Commission’s mid-year report on government services this week found that Victoria had the lowest rate of student satisfaction with the quality of vocational education and training of any state for the second year running.
The typical maximum government subsidy for a certificate IV in plumbing is about $11,293, according to the Skills Victoria Training System’s most recent funded program report.
A certificate IV in plumbing is necessary to obtain accreditation and insurance for a Victorian wanting to operate their own plumbing business, the plumbers’ union said.
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Of the 10 Victorian TAFE courses with the lowest completion rates, two – the certificate IV in building and construction, and the certificate IV in civil construction supervision – have since been superseded by similarly named qualifications. Their typical maximum subsidy is therefore not available.
Former premier Daniel Andrews unveiled his free TAFE policy in the 2018 state budget.
Australian and New Zealand citizens and permanent residents can enrol in a free course regardless of their previous qualifications. It is also possible to complete multiple free courses.