I do not agree that the TAFE system is a reliable and consistent source for education. It simply isn't, read reports or ask students and teachers. Some say it is excellent, others have terrible trouble, some teachers are wonderful, others are barely average. Some students end up having to re-do entire courses because teachers lose final exams. In many cases, teachers and students have personal conflicts and the system lets both sides down.
There is too much influence and interference about course design and structure from industry. There is too much political interference (via distribution of funding) for teachers to object. The consequence? Industry is dumbing down skills to the lowest common denominator, and important detail, creative and fine motor skills are being lost, or more esoteric academic thinking and analysis skills are not being nurtured.
It is an extremely expensive form of education, without redress to HECS support.
These reasons are why I left TAFE teaching years ago. If anyone denies that those problems were present when they were teaching, then I can reliably say they would have been contributing to it. There was too much focus on politics and not enough on teaching.
Government funded educational institutions are limited by the politics of education, and funding goes to those institutions who provide outcomes attractive to industry, like reduced downtime of staff, reduced time to reaping something for the investment in education, and increased productivity in relation to their own production lines. This last narrow outcome does not benefit the student receiving the curriculum, only those who sponsored it, which eventually under the current educational paradigm, is the stakeholders in the ITAB that developed the curriculum.
Private Industry Training Providers