The Education Minister had plenty to tell TEQSA, just nothing new to announce.
School completion in the public system is down 6% over eight years, the Education Minister warned in a speech to the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency. While the private provider figure is stable or increasing, in government school’s it is down to 79%. This, Mr Clare said, puts in jeopardy the target of 80% of Australians having a TAFE qualification or university degree by mid-century.
“The key message in the Accord is that we are not going to hit that 80% target unless we break that invisible barrier that stops a lot of young people from walking through your door,” he said.
Mr Clare focused on Government action to address the problem, including higher pay for earlier educators, funding for public schools, paid pracs for teaching, nursing, social work and midwifery students, unique student identifiers and, at length, “massively” expanding free enabling courses for university.
Mr Clare also included the proposed cap on international student numbers, “we have got to get the balance right here. And we have also got to remember what the primary and most important job our universities do is,” he said.
The Education Minister added that he hoped to provide detail on the Australian Tertiary Education Commission by year-end.
As to course costs, Mr Clare acknowledged, “university is more expensive today than it was when most of us were uni students” and he attributed this to “changes the previous Government made.”
However he added that the proposed 20% reduction in existing HELP debt, “fixes that for a generation,” without mentioning the cost of humanities courses under the present Job Ready Graduate fee system.
