The national co-ordination of technical and further education

A major development within educational systems in a number of western nations since the Second World War has been the establishment by governments of special bodies to coordinate tertiary education. In Australia, a complex system has been developed with coordinating agencies being established by governments at both state and federal levels and covering three sectors of tertiary education: universities, colleges of advanced education, and technical and further education (TAFE). While the Commonwealth government has assumed the financial responsibilities for universities and colleges of advanced education, the states still retain not only the constitutional, but also the major financial, responsibility for TAFE. This places the national coordination of TAFE in a unique position. This thesis analyses national coordinating agencies in TAFE in terms of their relationships with the Commonwealth government and groups at state and institutional levels during the period 1973-1981. The analysis led to two major conclusions: (1) that the Commonwealth government established over time a ‘structure of domination’ which ensured that the coordinating agencies’ powers and functions were undertaken in ways which were consonant with the government’s interests; and (2) that groups at state and institutional levels were, in large part, able to thwart the policy initiatives taken by coordinating agencies, and thus effectively limit their ‘exercise of authority’. These led to the following general conclusion that in the performance of their powers and functions, de jure and de facto, national coordinating agencies in TAFE required the support of two groups: those with the power of resource allocation (governments) and those with the power of implementation (groups at state and institutional levels), and that where support from either or both groups was not forthcoming, the coordinating agency was ineffective in performing these functions.

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