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Government funded TAFE student numbers remain lower under Labor

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The latest data released by the National Centre for Vocational Education and Research (NCVER) confirms that the number of Australians taking up a government funded TAFE course remains lower under Labor than under the Coalition. This comes despite repeated claims from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Skills Minister Brendan O’Connor, before and after the last election, that Fee Free TAFE would increase enrolments by hundreds of thousands of students.

The Albanese Government has repeatedly stated its Fee Free TAFE policy would increase the number of students taking up training by over 300,000.

Minister Brendan O’Connor said:

“After smashing our Fee-Free TAFE targets in 2023 with almost 300,000 enrolments as at September 30, I’m delighted we’re rolling out an additional 300,000 places from 2024.” - January 2024

“New figures reveal 355,557 Australians enrolled in Fee-Free TAFE across Australia during 2023, smashing the initial first-year target of 180,000.” - March 2024

But the official data demonstrates that in 2023 the number of Australians taking up a government funded TAFE course increased to 659,185, which is 12,200 fewer than the number of government funded TAFE students under Coalition in 2020, and in line with 2021 figures. 2022, the year Labor took office, saw a sharp decline in numbers as Labor delayed action on skills funding to keep announcements for its sham Jobs and Skills Summit.

This means Labor’s marquee skills program – Fee Free TAFE – has not materially increased the number of government funded students taking up training at TAFEs across the country.

Acting Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Minister for Skills and Training, Sussan Ley, said there was a clear gap between what Labor promised on skills and what it is delivering.

“Despite promising to increase the number of students at TAFE by hundreds of thousands, there are fewer than under the Coalition.

“Federal Labor, it appears, is just subsidising State budgets instead of having a meaningful impact on skills shortages by funding new students through new places at TAFEs.

“Compounding this failure, since Anthony Albanese took office, we have lost 85,300 apprentices and trainees from the workforce.

“Despite all of Labor’s grand promises to ‘skill more Australians’ the data demonstrates their policies just aren’t working and we are going backwards.”

This latest update follows the release of data from NCVER last week that shows apprentices and trainees in-training dropped to 343,640 in December 2023, 85,360 fewer than when Labor took office, or a loss of one in five.

Over the same period new training starts, or ‘commencements’, dropped to just 170,370. Meaning there are 107,500 fewer apprentices and trainees starting a trade or a skill, or a drop of 39 per cent since Anthony Albanese took office.

Trade apprentices in-training hit record highs in the final months of the Coalition Government and as of June 2022 there were 429,000 apprentices and trainees in-training and 277,900 commencements.

The number of female apprentices and trainees in training has fallen by 25 per cent and female commencements have fallen by 40 per cent.

Despite Labor promising to skill more construction workers, there are 5,300 fewer Construction Trades Workers apprentices in training since they took office and new starts have dropped by 23 per cent.

Labor came to power promising it would solve skills shortages. But according to Jobs and Skills Australia, 36 per cent of occupations were assessed as in-shortage in 2023, up from 31 per cent in 2022. 66 occupations were added to the in-shortage list in 2023 meaning on Labor’s watch, over 330 occupations are in-shortage across Australia.

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