Investment in free TAFE places must be matched with more funding for teachers: union

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday the federal, state and territory governments would fund the $1.1 billion package.

The Newcastle Herald asked federal Minister for Skills and Training Brendan O'Connor how the places would be allocated across the country and in what fields.

Federation post-schools organiser Annette Bennett said as well as a skills shortage, there was also a TAFE teachers shortage.

"It's a crisis," she said. "What really needs to happen is a [state government] reinvestment in the TAFE teacher workforce ... you can't put the cart before the horse. We need a reinvestment in the TAFE teacher workforce, in returning guaranteed and increased funding to public TAFE so we can adequately support students with all those wrap around services that we do, counselling, disability support, libraries.

"You can have all the free TAFE places you want, but if there's no teachers there with that industry knowledge and skills to teach then what are we going to do? Put a robot in front of a class?"

Ms Bennett said figures from TAFE's recent enterprise bargaining agreement ballot indicated the number of teachers and related employees including disability teacher consultants, assessors and education support officers had dropped by 52 per cent from 17,104 in 2012 to 8197 this year.

She said TAFE teachers needed a payrise, with the 2.53 per cent wage cap a "studied insult".

"We also need reinvestment in professional development of our teachers and more permanent secure jobs. TAFE is finding it difficult to engage teachers because they want to employ them on a casual basis ... we're now 77 per cent casualised."

Newcastle MP and NSW Shadow Minister for Skills and TAFE Tim Crakanthorp welcomed the announcement, saying the number of student enrolments across the state had dropped by 70,000 over the past decade.

"NSW is the largest provider of TAFE in Australia so you would expect a proportionate amount of those free places to come to us," Mr Crakanthorp said.

He said the state government had cut the workforce by a third over the past decade. "More than 5000 staff have gone which makes it very difficult to train up and skill up when there's such a shortage of skills in the actual workforce."

NSW Minister for Skills and Training Alister Henskens said he welcomed any funding to complement the state's investment in skills and training and would work with Mr O'Connor to "ensure that the detail of any arrangements offered by the federal government is in the best interests of NSW".

"The NSW government has delivered a record $3.1 billion for skills and training in 2022-23," he said. "This includes a record $2 billion for TAFE NSW, plus $319 million in capital investment, which takes the NSW government's total capital investment in TAFE NSW to more than $790 million since 2020-21."

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