I have been a lecturer for going on a decade now, for those of you who don't know what TAFE stands for, it is Technical and Further Education, but the real question is, what does TAFE really stand for?
As a technical college, vocational training in trades based skills drives industry and the economy, there is little doubt a highly literate and skilled workforce drives economic development - the Technical of TAFE. The equity side of the equation sees similarities to the community college model - the Further Education; community access and lifelong learning.
The vocational education and training (VET) sector sits between the high schools and higher education providers, their lower level qualifications are eroded by the high schools system whilst their higher level qualifications are regularly poached by the university sector. The real strength of the TAFE sector is technical training in the form of apprenticeships and community access.
But what does it really take to become a TAFE lecturer? Well, you need vocational competencies, a lecturer needs extensive experience in the industry, you also need to maintain such competencies and you then need training qualifications.
The Certificate IV in Training and Assessment is a totally worthless qualification, even deemed an at risk qualification by the auditing body. Making practitioners update to the latest qualification as the old ones were handed out in their droves in a race to the bottom does not improve quality.
Because, guess what? The low quality colleges churning out weekend Certificate IVs just do the same with the new qualification - they churn them out en masse.
The qualification should take close to six months fulltime study, a standard Certificate IV qualification aligned to the Australian Qualifications Framework is basically a supervisor's qualification.
Yet this qualification is often completed in just a weekend. I had to upgrade from the older qualification to updated qualification as required by the college, it took me just four hours to complete. Now while I held the older qualification, it doesn't seem much effort, I did, after all know the material well.
You can imagine my surprise when some experienced staff, that is ten plus years employment, were unable to complete the upgrade themselves. As you can well imagine, the benefit to a practitioner of a four hour upgrade is highly questionable, it is purely a paper shuffling exercise, everyone knows it.
Then the department can say, we have a highly qualified workforce, that may be true, they have met their KPIs. The question remains, do we have a highly skilled and technically competent workforce? I would say no.
What TAFE and the vocational education and training sector needs is suitability qualified and experienced practitioners. That is dual skills, vocation skills qualified to the level they are instructing to and teaching level skills.
The problem then arises, to maintain top notch vocational knowledge and skills, the practitioner needs industry currency, that is, to remain working in the industry they teach.
To take three years to complete a university level teaching qualification usually requires three years fulltime study, to take this time out of industry seriously undermines vocational skills and currency, by the time the practitioner is ready to begin teaching, their vocational currency has already eroded.
The real troubles with TAFE stem from their middle management, that is, at the strategic business unit level. From what I have seen, upper management has shown the ability to strategically position the organisation in a heavily regulated environment.
The system recruits outside the system on many occasions, this has the ability to bring new ideas to the organisation, this has to be balanced with enough internal recruitment allowing managers with specific knowledge of the VET system to prosper.
At the strategic business unit level, program managers lack the skills to lead a team mainly due to the fact many colleges will not place program managers in their area of expertise. In an engineering discipline, the college would place a manager from aged care, child care or horticulture.
The program manager has to negotiate with business enterprises having a sole engineering purpose, if they don't know the industry, the sector or the organisations, then problems occur. The program managers do not have the skill to overcome such hurdles, generally holding no management qualifications or experience.
As a state government body, the ability to attract and retain suitable personnel is a burning issue, all too often, a strategic business unit is burdened by non-performing staff.
Not only is there no real performance management systems in place, management fails to follow such procedures. Yes, there is a policy document, that is what it is, a document saved in a computer somewhere.
In nine years, I have received only one performance review, apparently, according to colleagues in other business units, that is one more than they have received. I welcome a performance review, not only do I perform, I like many others exceed my job description.
I review the manager critiquing him on his ability to provide an environment conducive to perform my duties. In my one performance review, my name was correct on the cover sheet but different in the review, did he not know who I am or does copy/paste work all too well?
The real issue arises from investment in resources, every time I deal with industry representatives, colleagues and myself beg for old components and equipment for our students to disassemble and inspect during practical projects.
What this does is ensure management does not invest in the portfolio adding to a mish/mash of learning activities instead of a standardised professional approach. The strategic portfolio is not only profitable, it is highly profitable.
At the divisional directors level, they are able to siphon off revenue to prop up non-performing portfolio areas. They do not invest in the successful portfolio area, marginal areas not driving the state's productivity are targeted - madness.
The real issue is the design and implementation of learning programs, my specialty. As lecturers are employed with mainly industry backgrounds; the college does not set aside suitably qualified and experienced staff to develop high quality learning programs.
All too often, a program manager seeks a good worker with plenty of enthusiasm lacking in program design skills to throw together programs.
A whole professional field exists in program design, instead all too often, embarrassing and unprofessional materials are whacked together not meeting industry training outcomes or learning objectives.
Indeed, most times, contemporary learning practices are largely ignored because the designer (that term is used freely) is unfamiliar with adult learning practices, learning models and facilitation methodology.
So, who are the losers here? The students learn material unrelated to their field, they are assessed against unrelated information and ultimately, when they fail, they are considered stupid. They have to remember inconsequential facts and memorise procedures for exams unrelated to their employment.
The employers are losers too, they send their apprentices for training, returning to work failing to meet their workplace needs resenting time consuming low quality training that they are required to fulfill.
So, how is this quandary solved? Facilitators are not course design specialists, they instead need to concentrate on program delivery developed by suitably qualified and experienced staff.
Mid-level managers must employ course design specialists or purchase professionally designed materials contextualised for their clients.
Instead of shuffling funds around spreadsheets, they need to free up suitably trained and experienced course designers and offer a more professional service to their clients.
Program managers require the communication skills to negotiate with team members, the use of performance management techniques to identify possessed skills and knowledge whilst also identifying skills gaps to properly identify the correct person for the task.
Utilising incompetent people to undertake high-level tasks purely because of enthusiasm in an attempt to force more competent people to work harder is not management, all this does is diminish the capability of the organisation.
An engineering workshop manager does not ask the trades assistant to undertake intricate diagnosis and testing merely because the trades assistant works hard. A competent workshop manager knows the abilities of their team members utilising the most technically competent tradesperson.
The trades assistant may be asked to provide support to complete the job by removing covers, operating the machine, cleaning components and other task related duties.
The manager with no knowledge of engineering workshop management should be running the strategic portfolio like an engineering workshop. The problem is, they do not know how an engineering workshop runs apart from the occasional on-site visit that are nothing more than a photo opportunity.
Sure, they have budgets to maintain but really need to leave the bean counting to accounting and finance.
