Reflections on the future of VET and TAFE: Saigon, Dunkirk or the Alamo?

In terms of student numbers, the vocational education and training (VET) sector is the second largest of the four education sectors (the others being early childhood, schooling and higher education). Together with the early childhood sector, it has always been more precariously situated and vulnerable than the schooling or higher education sectors. It was the first education sector to feel harsh winds of neo-liberal reform; and it has been by far the hardest hit by these reforms. Despite this, what has happened and continues to happen in VET receives comparatively little critical attention compared to what is happening in schooling and higher education.

This paper will consider a myriad of developments in the VET sector since the late 1980s, including the reforms to VET curriculum, the deprofessionalisation of VET practitioners and their banishment from VET policy forums, the ever-narrowing conception of the nature of VET, the shift to market models of delivery, privatisation of delivery, ongoing reductions in government funding, and the introduction of an 'entitlement model' of access to VET. This overview calls into question the very future of vocational education in Australia. John Buchanan (2014) from the University of Sydney has recently argued that the collapse of public VET is inevitable and that the choice is between 'Dunkirk' (i.e. a strategic withdrawal and regrouping) or 'Saigon' (i.e. a shambolic and humiliating rout). A TAFE colleague suggested that Buchanan should also have included 'the Alamo' as a possibility, where we get wiped out completely.

Excerpt from publication. Show less