Term 1-05
Funding Cuts
In November 2004 the college was informed that for the first time in 20 years, there would be a real decrease in NSW Government funding to Community Colleges. The enormity of the 33% decrease was swift and un-negotiated.
Evening and Community Colleges or their predecessors have been part of the NSW Education system since the 1880 Education Act when night schools were formalised as the adult part of the public education system. At various points in our educational history, Evening and Community Colleges have played important societal roles.
Post World War One, for instance, Evening and Community Colleges played a significant role in the retraining and resettlement of returned soldiers. Literacy and Adult Basic Education have always featured high in the achievements of Evening and Community Colleges as has the Teaching of English as a Second Language to Adult Migrants. Prior to the addition of Further Education, which is the “FE” in TAFE, Evening and Community Colleges assisted adult students gain school qualifications and to prepare for the Public Service Entrance and other examinations.
In recent years, especially the last decade, Evening and Community Colleges have substantially achieved one of the largest technical “up-skilling” events in our history; a whole generation, not previously familiar with computers in the work place, has been trained in their operation and application for the first time.
There have been various research projects that have tried to estimate the strength and worth of the effort of Community Colleges specifically and Adult and Community Education (ACE), more generally. Of these, the Commonwealth Senate enquiry into Adult Education titled “Come in Cinderella” was the most significant. A recent iteration of that report “Beyond Cinderella: towards a Learning Society” noted:
“… Lifelong learning has been a major theme in education policy debate stimulated by UNESCO’s Institute of Education, and is bound up with the promotion of the `learning society’. In the Committee’s view, both notions must guide the development of education and training policy in Australia.
…A national education and training system which is based on lifelong learning principles will provide educational opportunities which will:
? last the whole life of each individual;
? lead to the systematic acquisition, renewal, upgrading and completion of knowledge, skills and attitudes made necessary by the constantly changing conditions in which people now live;
? have as its ultimate goal the self-fulfilment of each individual;
? be dependent for its successful implementation on people’s increasing ability and motivation to engage in self-directed learning activities; and
? acknowledge the contribution of all available educational influences, including formal, non formal and informal.
The Committee’s affirmation of lifelong learning as the fundamentally necessary attribute of Australia’s national education and training system is based on the understandings set out above. These principles must be placed in the foreground of any policy development process aimed at the creation of a learning society. In the Committee’s view, the ACE sector has successfully integrated these principles into its structure and practice. The Committee has formulated its recommendations about policy and funding arrangements with a view to securing, at government level, a commitment to lifelong learning principles as an integral part of education policy.”
Given the strength this high-level bi-partisan statement, it is confusing that the NSW State Minister for Education should take such a short-sighted view of the nature and role of ACE.
Even before the recently announced cuts, the ACE sector in NSW received less than .25% (one quarter of one percent) of the total NSW Education budget. The sector is clearly the most cost effective and the most under funded of all of the sectors of education enrolling as it does, more than 350,000 students in NSW alone each year.
We at the college have been placed in an invidious position. As a not-for-profit organisation, dedicated to providing educational opportunity for all, we have been forced to increase course fees by as much as 20%. This will mean that students who found it difficult to afford a course will now probably not be able to enrol, further widening the gap of educational opportunity. We regret this and see it as a serious undermining of the valuable work we have done in the past.
I urge the Minister for Education to reverse this decision.
Garry John Traynor
Principal
garry.traynor@scc.nsw.edu.au
The views expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
