Mr Heeney said despite some negative publicity in metropolitan media about the Victorian Government’s Free TAFE program, it had been a huge success, leading to increased enrolments and opportunities for students who previously would have been unable to study.
More than 950 students have enrolled in more than 40 Free TAFE courses being offered at GOTAFE.
For some courses this equates to more than 75 per cent of total enrolments.
‘‘We expect that number to continue to rise this year and in 2020, when more courses will be added under the Free TAFE program,’’ Mr Heeney said.
‘‘For many potential students in our region, the barriers to education are quite significant because they either cannot afford to pay for a course or they can’t afford the cost of travelling to another location to study.
‘‘In an area with some of the state’s highest youth unemployment rates, our challenge is to improve the skills and lives of our regional population. To do that we must remove as many barriers to education as possible and Free TAFE is playing a major role.’’
Mr Heeney said the program had also created jobs at GOTAFE, with about 20 new trainers being employed.
Many existing trainers had also upskilled to be able to deliver the courses new to GOTAFE.
‘‘We continue to recruit trainers and we have committed to pay for all of our trainers to undertake a key qualification, the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment,’’ Mr Heeney said.
He said class sizes had remained reasonable and, where necessary, extra classes had been introduced.
‘‘Some of our nursing courses are at capacity, but we’ve introduced new classes to the schedule,’’ he said.
Mr Heeney said another benefit of Free TAFE was it was leading to a skills boost for the region in both established and emerging professions.
‘‘Prior to Free TAFE, we struggled to get enough enrolments in some courses, including accounting, and courses such as cyber security were not on our radar,’’ he said.
‘‘Free TAFE has meant these courses have become a reality and we’ve been able to significantly broaden our course offerings. It can only be a positive for our region to have more people qualified in skills areas that have been identified as skills for the future.
‘‘By training local people we improve the likelihood of them staying in the region, which has economic and social benefits for the area and the community.
‘‘Free TAFE is a huge boon for our region and I encourage anyone thinking about studying to find out what is on offer. With rolling intakes it’s not too late to study something in 2019 and there will be plenty of opportunities in 2020.’’
