Parliamentary Secretary for the Central Coast, Adam Crouch, has hit back at criticism from Member for Gosford, Liesl Tesch, that the redevelopment of TAFE NSW courses was sent offshore to companies with no experience in the subject matter.
Tesch said documents obtained by NSW Labor revealed that in an effort to ensure reaccreditation was completed in time for Semester 1, 2022, the Government awarded a $10M contract to EY and a $6.6M contract to Deloitte, who then sent the work to foreign countries.
Shadow Minister for Skills and TAFE, Tim Crakanthorp, reported multiple sources within TAFE had advised the new courses were of a low standard given language limitations and the lack of knowledge within the fields, Tesch said.
“TAFE students should be receiving quality education – and that includes quality course material,” Tesch said. “In fact it is central to their success.
“To be offshoring jobs is absolutely reprehensible in whatever circumstance … but, to add insult to injury, not only are they offshoring our jobs but they’re impacting the quality of our future workforce.
“Even if the price is lower, the cost of our future TAFE professionals – including chefs, aged care nurses and hair dressers, to name a few – is simply an unmeasurable price to pay.”
Tesch said TAFE teachers should be the first in line to develop courses for local students.
“In addition, we have excellent industry talent in NSW, who should be supported by government to develop courses to fit their skill needs and future skill shortages.”
But Crouch said as a result of changes to the national training packages, TAFE was required to update training and assessment materials for more than 250 courses.
“This is an unprecedented level of change and represents a significant increase in the volume of work usually undertaken in an academic year,” he said.
“In planning for this increased demand, and in the interest of students, TAFE NSW brought in additional short-term resources to scale up its development of training and assessment materials.
“These resources worked alongside, and in consultation with, TAFE NSW’s product development teams.”
Crouch said providers may have drawn upon their global capacity to meet contract requirements, but “no courses being offered have failed to reach the required standard”.
“TAFE NSW has reorganised its workforce over the last five years, moving from 10 autonomous institutes to a single organisation,” he said.
“Over that time, TAFE NSW has removed some duplicate or outdated roles but this has had no impact on classroom teaching roles. TAFE NSW recruited 305 new full-time teachers in the 2021 academic year.
“The NSW Government is investing a record $1.97B in TAFE NSW this financial year, plus $251M in new and upgraded teaching facilities and equipment.
Terry Collins