Page 2454 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 9 August 2016
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Move forward to 2013 and CIT was again embroiled in controversy as it struggled, and at times, frankly, failed, to deliver appropriate support to an examination of a range of issues brought by staff around what they believed was unfair treatment at the hands of senior CIT staff and the executive.
During last year, once again CIT was attracting all the wrong sort of publicity as it came to light that it was struggling to meet student needs and industry requirements in its electro technology courses.
CIT was the subject of a considerable amount of scrutiny in the Standing Committee on Education, Training and Youth Affairs inquiry into vocational education. It faced an ASQA audit and those results did not entirely satisfy the committee’s concerns over the status and completeness of its student capstone assessment. During the estimates hearing CIT officers also faced a number of questions about this, and it has had to provide additional assurances to the committee about ongoing assessment.
The minister tabled her response to the committee report’s recommendations last week and, while the government has agreed or agreed in principle to most of them, there are some that are merely noted and one not agreed. On balance, I think that is a reasonable outcome for the committee and for the industry and its apprentices that were under scrutiny.
I think the evidence taken in this inquiry was of benefit to CIT, even though it caused some internal angst. I trust that CIT has learned from that, although, in fairness to CIT, had additional financial support been forthcoming some of the problems it experienced may not have occurred. It was not CIT’s fault that another RTO collapsed overnight and students were transferred to CIT, but I do think many mistakes were made in trying to meet the challenges caused by this collapse and consequent mistakes. Frankly, having the former minister run interference every time a question was asked on this did not help.
The estimates committee did not just focus on CIT’s problems, and it would be quite wrong of me if I were not to also highlight some of the more positive activities that CIT is undertaking. In last year’s appropriation debate there was a lot of discussion about the closure of Woden and the eventual relocation and establishment of a Tuggeranong campus. The delivery of the new CIT campus at Tuggeranong was a 2012 election promise, so its opening finally last week was a just-in-time moment—one that we have heard and seen by this government before, where election promises were sometimes announced three times and then finally delivered in a different election period.
I am told the transfer of courses, students and staff from Woden has been completed and relatively smoothly. I hope that is the case, because we received many complaints at the outset that no-one knew was what happening. Leanne Cover, CIT’s relatively new CEO, told the committee that CIT, particularly at its Tuggeranong campus, was crossing over a little interschool-linked training, particularly in areas of health, community services, hospitality and ICT. This is an area that I believe will be of enormous value to students, particularly in the south of Canberra and, given the complexities of RTO registration, CIT can play a leadership role in this space.
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