Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Student Identifiers Bill 2014, as the bill highlights the growing importance of vocational education and training to Australians. Today more Australians than ever before are going to university, getting a skill or undertaking vocational education and training. The reality of the modern education and employment market is that, today, these Australians are undertaking this study and training across multiple disciplines, across multiple institutions and often over extended periods of time. The days of a job for life, of a lifetime career, are well and truly gone. We live in a world where people will have multiple careers throughout their lives and as a result will need to update their skills and undertake formal retraining at a number of stages in their lives.

In this context, it can be difficult for students to keep track of their training records and educational attainment. This is a particularly significant issue when students are seeking to enter a higher level educational course, perhaps years after completing an initial course of study. Obtaining admission to these higher level educational courses generally requires the production of formal evidence of prior learning. Similarly, when students are looking to start work or to change their job and start a new career, evidence of a comprehensive record of prior study is important to give people the best possible chance to secure employment.

This bill provides for the creation of a unique student identifier for vocational education and training students. The purpose of a unique student identifier of this kind is to enable students who undertake vocational education and training through an Australian registered training organisation to see the totality of their VET enrolment and achievement in a single transcript record. It puts an end to the need for a shoebox full of educational transcripts and qualifications stored in the top shelf of the bedroom closet.

Not only will this be an advantage to VET students in planning their studies and using their VET achievement to secure employment but it will also allow for data to be collected on the way that students participate in the VET system—where they study, how they perform and the pathways that students take through the system. This information will inform research into the sector, enabling administrators and policymakers to adapt the system to maximise student outcomes. This would also enable evidence to be gathered to develop programs that more effectively target skills shortages and the skills needs of industry and employers more closely.

The bill before the House shows a striking resemblance to the Student Identifiers Bill 2013, introduced by the previous Labor government. It is unsurprising that the coalition would seek to mimic aspects of the previous Labor government's VET policy because the record of the previous Labor government on vocational education and training was excellent. In government, Labor made a record investment in skills and training, making the investments necessary so that Australians could benefit from smarter jobs and a stronger economy. We coupled this record investment with a dynamic VET environment that gave Australians the platform they needed to develop the skills necessary to compete in the Asian century.

The previous Labor government expanded access to student loans to reduce up-front financial barriers for those wanting to study a diploma or advanced diploma. Between 2008-09 and 2012-13, the previous Labor government invested over $19 billion in skills funding, a 77 per cent increase over the Howard government's investment. After commencing in 2009, the Labor government provided funding of $6.06 billion to support state and territory skills and workforce development under the national agreement. Across the nation in 2011, a total of $6.5 billion was invested in Australia's national training system, with the then federal government's share being $2.4 billion.

Unfortunately, the state Liberal government in Victoria, my home state, has not been doing its share on VET funding. The impact of the state Liberal government's swingeing cuts to TAFE and the VET sector in Melbourne's west have been particularly severe, and my constituents are keenly looking forward to the opportunity to hold the Liberal government to account for these cuts—perhaps sooner than it had anticipated.

In Melbourne's west, less than 50 per cent of the population have completed high school and less than 10 per cent have completed a bachelor degree. We also have a very large migrant and culturally and linguistically diverse community, with over half of the resident population in Melbourne's west speaking a language other than English at home. In this context, TAFEs are particularly important to Melbourne's west as providers of tailored employment training, often addressing skills gaps or deficits in basic education.

The Victorian Liberal government's cut of $170 million in funding allocated to TAFEs to meet their community obligations, promote social inclusion and provide support to students from disadvantaged backgrounds has particularly hurt Melbourne's west. One result of this cut has been the retrenchment of more than 13 full-time youth and education support workers at Victoria University, in my electorate. These student support roles are particularly important for institutions like Victoria University that support large numbers of students who either are the first members of their immediate family to enter the tertiary education sector or come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

It is worth noting for the House that Victoria University has substantially higher numbers of first-generation students than other universities. In fact, over 60 per cent of the students undertaking a bachelor degree at Victoria University do not have parents with a university degree. The technical definition is 'higher education students enrolled at a bachelor or sub-bachelor course level for whom neither parent holds a university-level qualification'. The overall rate for universities across the country is around 30 per cent, so Victoria University has almost twice that level of students who do not have family members with a university degree. These are exactly the kinds of people that our education system should be providing opportunities for.

These students often require a little more holistic support early on in their studies to ensure that they are able to make the challenging transition to tertiary study. These students often do not have the experienced support networks enjoyed by more privileged students and, as such, they are at risk of dropping out of tertiary education early in their degrees.

More broadly, Victoria University, the primary provider of higher education in Melbourne's west, has been substantially impacted by the cuts in VET program subsidies by the Victorian Liberal government. Cuts to VU's program subsidy funding constitute over 25 per cent of the total revenue of VU's TAFE. As a result, VU has been forced to undertake major retrenchments of its TAFE teachers and support staff. As VU is a major employer in Melbourne's west, this has also had obvious flow-on effects for the broader economy of the region. Cuts in VET funding in Melbourne's west have also had an impact on the fees faced by prospective students. When coupled with the Liberal government's decision to remove caps on VET students' fees, the cuts in VET funding have had the inevitable consequence of pushing student fees higher. TAFE providers are forced to increase fees to compensate for lost government funding in order to remain viable—with consequences for the accessibility of education for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

A further consequence of the Victorian Liberal government's cuts to VET funding is the knock-on effect that these cuts have on the accessibility of university study in Melbourne's west. As students from Melbourne's west are statistically more likely to come from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds, they rely heavily on alternative pathways to university study, including VET programs at Victoria University. Of particular concern in this respect is the state Liberal government's decision to dramatically reduce funding for VET certificate I and II courses. These courses are generally not vocational in nature but instead are used by disadvantaged students as bridging courses to further study. Limiting access to VET programs in Melbourne's west therefore has a pipeline effect of limiting access to university study for students in the region. The cumulative effect of these changes is to further entrench educational disadvantage in Melbourne's west.

Vocational education and training is essential for our nation's future. It is a fundamental driver of our nation's productivity. It is an important tool in fighting inequality and giving people from disadvantaged backgrounds a chance to climb the skills ladder to higher paying and higher quality jobs. Labor fully supports our VET sector. We did so in government and we continue to do so from opposition. This is a reasonable bill that will help Australians get the most out of their VET studies, and Labor supports its passage in the House.

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