August 30, 2015
TAFE Queensland is here to stay, local business people were assured last week, although the future of the training organisation may not always lie in “bricks and mortar”.
Members of the TAFE Queensland Board and TAFE Qld South West general manager Trevor Schwenke chatted with local businesspeople at a meet’n’greet held at the Kingaroy campus last Wednesday night.
The event was part of a two-day visit to the campus by the Board, who also held their monthly meeting at the facility – the first time they have met in Kingaroy.
Board chairman Warren Tapp said the Board was in town to listen to local businesspeople and find out what their needs were.
Asked if the Kingaroy campus was always going to remain open, Mr Tapp said the Board was in the middle of a 10-year strategic asset plan.
“Once it is completed we will have a better perspective,” he said.
However, TAFE was delivering more and more courses online and in a mobile way, including in the workplace.
There were also 90 videolink sites across the State.
He said the future of TAFE may not be “bricks and mortar” but it would always be around.
“The nature of training is changing,” he said.
The training marketplace was “fully contestable” and there were literally thousands of training providers across Australia.
But TAFE was focussing on “training people for jobs, not training them for training’s sake”.
“Our focus is on applied learning which translates into business outcomes,” Mr Tapp said.
He said TAFE aimed to “journey with local business” to provide the training required in the local community.
“I am also passionate about interacting with schools. We want to partner with them a lot more closely than in the past,” he said.
A student’s connection with TAFE could go from high school right through to graduation from university.
From Semester 1 next year, TAFE Queensland will be offering 25 degree courses at the Southbank campus in Brisbane, as a registered provider itself and in conjunction with the University of Canberra.
After 2016, this program, which includes Dentistry and Engineering, would expand throughout Queensland.
“We will keep on refining our product,” Mr Tapp said.
Mr Tapp said the unemployment rate in the South Burnett region continued to be an issue, sitting at 10.6 per cent, higher than the State average of 6.5 per cent and 6.3 per cent across the South West.
“Together we need to explore and develop strategies that will reinvigorate and grow the region’s strengths; tourism and hospitality, primary industries, health and community services, electrical and engineering,” he said.
“The region’s relatively large geographic area and population distribution lends itself to new and innovative training models to ensure we meet the region’s needs.
“Increasingly we are looking at flexible and workplace delivery for a number of our courses, which has been enthusiastically embraced from employers, particularly in the delivery of rural training.”
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