Educators and potential students will be among those hardest hit by changes to TAFE Western in 2015, according to Country Labor candidate for Dubbo Stephen Lawrence.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Mr Lawrence pointed the finger squarely at Dubbo MP Troy Grant and the National Party he leads for not standing up to the Liberals over funding cuts to TAFE and a greater focus on private education institutes, known as the Smart and Skilled reforms.
The Teachers Federation is claiming the move will decrease enrolments, drive up costs for students and cost jobs. They say it will eventually result in a similar situation to Victoria, where just 27 per cent of traineeships are conducted by TAFE.
"The government's TAFE plans or policies are called Smart and Skilled and I find that quite ironic," Mr Lawrence said.
"These fee increases and inevitable course cuts will lead to our community being less skilled and less educated.
"If this market based system for VET [vocational education and training] has any merit, and I'm not sure about that, that merit would surely only in city areas where there is a lot of private providers.
"It's fundamentally different in the country where we don't have anywhere near as many private providers and we are seeing the same fee increases, which will inevitably lead to course cuts and people losing their jobs in these institutions."
Mr Lawrence said he fears it will be harder than ever for people to access affordable post-school education.
"What we are seeing in terms of the policy is a move towards a market based system for the provision of vocational and educational training," he said.
"The underlying ideology seems to be you push up TAFE fees to allow the private operators to compete with TAFE. In my opinion that's a flawed policy, it's a policy product of the extreme right wing privatisation user pays policy that we see from Mike Baird. The Nationals seem incapable of standing up to it.
"If you look at the tertiary education sector, which is controlled by the feds, they are trying their hardest to move towards deregulation, where each university can set their own fees. That will see $100,000 degrees. There is no doubt about that if they get that through. We are seeing a similar situation in NSW with TAFE."
The Labor candidate said Dubbo people should be able to get access to education at a reasonable price. He said they have enough to worry about without the cost of education discouraging them from furthering themselves.
"This electorate is one of the poorest electorates in the state. People in this electorate suffer form all sorts of cost of living pressures in all sorts of ways. Our mortgage foreclosure rates is one of the highest in the state and people are doing it really tough," he said.
"People here need a government that will stand up for people and a government that will put education, health and all of those essential services at the heart of government in terms of importance and prioritisation. We simply don't see that from the Libs and the Nats."