Members will have learnt today, as the CPSU NSW has, that Managing Director at TAFE NSW, Steffen Faurby, is leaving.
This would ordinarily be a time to reflect on a departing leader’s successes. The Minister for Skills and Tertiary Education, Geoff Lee, was only able to highlight a “series of ongoing reforms” as Mr Faurby’s crowning achievement – but we are struggling to identify which of these is praiseworthy.
Are the rolling restructures that have made many of our members forcibly redundant one of Mr Faurby’s reforms the Minister is referring to?
Or is it the sale of TAFE campuses, such as Scone campus, to private sector interest groups?
Or the roll out of inferior Connected Learning Centres (CLCs) across regional NSW as a replacement for proper TAFE campuses that provide genuine needs-based training for local communities?
Or perhaps it is more broadly the general slide of TAFE NSW on his watch from being the most trustworthy, accessible and highly regarded Vocational Education and Training (VET) institution in the country to a provider without a clear future?
The new Managing Director of TAFE NSW, whomever it may be, will certainly have a lot on their plate.
The Minister is correct when he identifies that TAFE NSW is needed now more than ever, but the solution is not more of the same cutbacks, outsourcing and restructuring.
The CPSU NSW has long argued that public investment through better funding models is the key to a bigger and brighter future for TAFE NSW.
Let’s all hope that the new Managing Director is someone that shares this vision and actually attempts to Rebuild our TAFE into the viable and essential organisation it should be.
