Member for Cootamundra Katrina Hodgkinson has welcomed the announcement of a modernised structure for TAFE NSW which includes a refurbishment of facilities at Grenfell TAFE.
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TAFE NSW says the restructure has occurred to reduce overheads, direct more resources to frontline teaching and guarantee TAFE NSW is meeting the training and skills needs of the Grenfell community.
"This announcement includes a plan to refurbish facilities at the Grenfell and Cowra campuses to become multipurpose student hubs,” Ms Hodgkinson.
“This refurbishment will include undercover outdoor areas to support the delivery of specialist training through mobile or simulator units.
"The Young Campus is also set to benefit enormously from the $7.1 million investment this financial year with a major upgrade of facilities already underway.
“This upgrade will provide industry standard training facilities for students in Health and Aged Care, Children's Services, Hairdressing and Beauty and Engineering."
There will also be an information and communications technology infrastructure upgrade across Western NSW.
"This announcement represents a once-in-a-generation reform of TAFE NSW which will see the independent institute structure dissolved and replaced with a single, multi-campus TAFE NSW.
"This reform is about providing more choice, better access and convenient training for our students across the Cootamundra electorate to help them get the jobs of the future," Ms Hodgkinson said.
"It will make significant savings on back office administration and management which will be reinvested back into training and skilling more people in our community."
Ms Hodgkinson said for every $1 million saved through this reform, the NSW Government can subsidise the training for 250 extra students to help them get their first job, or upskill for their next career step.
The 25-year-old TAFE Institute model was designed to create competition between the Institutes to increase student choice; however, with the variety of options available today TAFE doesn't need to compete with itself.
"Excessive overheads, a large and underutilised asset base, and inflexible workforce arrangements are diverting valuable Government funding away from the most important job TAFE has - training our workforce of the future.
“TAFE NSW has an important role to play in helping people achieve their goals."
