Page 247 - Week 01 - Thursday, 13 February 2020
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Tertiary education—funding
MR WALL: My question is to the Minister for Tertiary Education. Minister, late last month you cut $14 million out of a $17 million budget of funding dedicated to VET courses. These cuts impact a wide range of qualifications being delivered in the ACT. How much notice was given of this decision to the training providers, and how much notice was given to prospective students?
MR BARR: Firstly the government did not cut any funding. In fact what we will see is that that program will continue to run over budget, probably to the tune of about 30 per cent, for the foreseeable future. What the government did do is respond to the circumstances where the program, which is demand driven, was oversubscribed. We did restrict the level of subsidy for certain courses to impact—
Mr Wall: You were funding the oversubscription and now you are not.
MR BARR: No, we continue to fund the oversubscription, because no existing students are affected. But what we have done is determine that that overfunding cannot continue to grow exponentially over the forward estimates. The budget for the program is a little over $14 million. The expenditure will be closer to $18 million or $19 million. It will remain at that level of overexpenditure for the medium term.
As is common practice each year with the skills list, there is a consultation with industry that begins about six months before the list is finally announced. It changes every year to reflect the skills needs in our economy. Notice was given. The changes have come into effect but do not impact on existing students.
The bigger challenge is that our completion rate is not what it should be. Though we have the highest number of students in government-funded training positions of any jurisdiction, and we have had for the past six years, the position we face is that there are more enrolments but not enough completions. That is a problem that the industry is going to need to respond to, because completions are what we need, not enrolments for the sake of enrolments and certainly not enrolments chasing subsidies. This was exactly the issue that impacted federally in relation to VET-FEE HELP. We cannot allow that situation to manifest in the ACT. We will continue to overfund this, but not uncapped. (Time expired.)
MR WALL: Minister, what consultation occurred with training providers prior to the cut occurring?
MR BARR: Skills Canberra met, as I indicated, about six months before to discuss the skills list and the particular courses that would be the subject of the user choice program and what industry needs would be for the coming year. There was then a series of meetings held through January with industry stakeholders. Those meetings continue. That is a routine part of the annual skills list program and the user choice program.
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