Last week the class was empty with not one student turning up

Much has been said about the considerable burdens and frustrations that have been placed upon the senior secondary colleges that have joined the Tasmanian Polytechnic, of which are considerable, but little has been said about the changes to TAFE.

TAFE has lost its identity as a provider of quality training for mature adult learners. Where previously TAFE students were on the whole well into workforce and post-workforce life experiences, TAFE campuses have been increasinlgy asked to cater for what has been titled “entitlement students” who are in years 11 and 12 since the creation of the Polytechnic.

Unlike colleges TAFE does not have the systems and structures to cater for these students, and TAFE teachers have become increasingly concerned with the focus of the Polytechnic on senior secondary students, and away from the customary base of career changers and other adult learners.

One of these systems that TAFE has not previously had is a centralised system for monitoring student attendance. Every TAFE class teacher was given a yellow folder to mark off the attendance of students at classroom sessions. These folders were filled in by hand and usually held onto by the teacher. That is generally as far as attendance records go.

There is no centralised system to monitor students attendace. Unlike colleges, including the college campuses that have joined the Polytechnic, attendance records are not entered into a database. How then can are attendances monitored at former TAFE campuses? The answer is that unless the Workforce Learning Leader (formerly known as Team Leaders) has some interest in the statistics, then they wouldn’t.

And why would they?

Resourcing of TAFE courses and teams is done on the number of students enrolled, not on the number of students attending. Take the case of the TAFE course I am involved with. It’s a reasonably small team in a technical Training Package. For a Certificate III class at mid-year enrollment the class was fully enrolled (18+ students) and a waiting list of more than a few. Last week the class was empty with not one student turning up.

The numbers have generally decreased since the first week of semester (where about 10 out of 18 turned up). Even though these absences are recorded, they are not reported. All of these students are still ‘on the books’. They are still enrolled, and they are still retained. These students are included in the 95% retention statistics, even though many have not attended a single class.

These students will be given an NS (not started) at the end of the semester, but by then Christmas will be upon us and the last thing on anyone’s minds will be retention rates.

In short, there is absolutely no way that the Minister for Education can assert that the retention rate of Polytechnic students is 95%.

I suspect the only centralised data collected is from the colleges, and not from TAFE campuses, and seeing as all young people must be in formal education or training to get benefits, then the number should be high.

If we actually looked at the number of students attending, then the story would be different. I know that no-one has ever asked me what the attendance levels are of my classes, and probably never will, and if no-one has asked for my attendance records, the statistics can’t be complete, and I am not Robinson Crusoe in the Polytechnic Island.
Oranges and Lemons