It is dynamism in the workplace that leads to productivity improvement.

In a dynamic workplace, people communicate, collaborate, explore new ideas and think about the future of their jobs, their employer, and their industry’s future options in Australia. Our current national TAFE system has all the dynamism of a neglected fossil collection.

At the heart of improved productivity in Australian workplaces is better communication. The abilities of people to convey knowledge, opinions and numerical information, in spoken or written form, is what generates dynamism in workplace cultures. Sadly, our current TAFE system scores miserably in developing students’ communication skills.

The TAFE acronym — Technical And Further Education — belies the fact that the values and practices of “education” (never particularly strong in TAFE) have been long displaced by the archaic administrative idiocies of Competency-Based Training.

I suspect that the decision to adopt CBT into our national vocational education system was flicked through by the federal government mostly on the simplistic rationale of “Who could be against competency?”

Had the pollies and bureaucrats of the day bothered to lift the metaphorical bonnet on CBT, they may have discovered that CBT’s origins are in a management fashion from the 1950s auto building industry. Back then, in Dagenham, Detroit and Dandenong, CBT was seen as a way to “scientifically” crank up the speed of assembly lines for the benefit of profits and management careers. Workers had narrowly defined tasks to be completed in minimal time to precisely defined standards, Assembly line workers needed to know only what was vital for their immediate tasks. Managers may have needed broader knowledge, but the grunts on the assembly line needed just to do what they were told in the shortest time

“Education”, in any philosophical, personal, workplace or social development sense, remains an anathema to CBT in TAFE, so, here we are in 2025, still pretending that the values of education can be shoehorned into the rigid administrative idiocies of CBT.

Over decades, failed attempts at putting an education element into TAFE should have alerted federal governments that fixing TAFE requires a complete review of the system. However, federal political apathy has prevailed and vested interests have resisted change. Senior jobs in Canberra TAFE bureaucracies have been converted to consultation prizes for pollies who have lost their seats but like living in Canberra. The occasional parliamentary chanting of “Fee Free TAFE” has the touching simplicity of Orwell’s “Four legs good”.

The ability to effectively communicate has been long recognised as a marker of workplace productivity. The ability for all employees to express, explain, use maths skills, demonstrate, question and collaborate is what creates dynamic workplaces.

The Soviet-style Central Planning Committees for each industry sector covered by Australian TAFE frequently ask for better Com Skills/Oracy/Reading/Writing/Maths and “Employability” skills”. They include them in their wishlists of desired TAFE student outcomes. The wishlists are seldom actualised.

Instead, wishlist items are passed through multiple admin bodies, across state jurisdictions, across multi-level manager desks, before being presented to an “available” teacher at a single TAFE provider with the instruction “See what you can do with this, it’s due to start soon!”

With no federal leadership, no economies-of-scale in developing and continuingly reviewing top-quality learning resources, and no Australia-wide vocational educational objectives, it’s little wonder that the dominant organisational game in Australian TAFE is “Pass the Parcel”

Language and maths skills are mightily useful at work. They help with learning about a new practical task or product, or explaining the way a job is done to a new starter in a job. Being better at explaining ideas and analysing information at workplace meetings saves time and contributes directly to productivity. Wider reading and understanding of both purpose-written learning resources and existing industry publications helps employees keep up-to-date with trends, technological changes and debate within their industry sector.

Apprentices and other TAFE students have not necessarily done well at school. Many need to extend their basic skills to be better at studies and more productive in their jobs.

TAFE’s fixation with CBT means that no effective basic skills education is routinely available. For example: A young East Gippsland person decides on a long-term ambition – say, to become a diesel mechanic in the timber harvesting industry, and rocks up to his local TAFE to ask about a pre-apprenticeship course. He is given a “generic” literacy test. If he doesn’t meet the arbitrary level, he is told something along the lines of, “Our advice is to see if you can go back to school”.

In a sane and economically rational world, our young bloke from Bairnsdale would be offered the chance to build his reading by progressively, steadily and patiently extending his sight-word vocabulary for the written language of his chosen industry, at the same time as he is learning the knowledge and skills needed for his future job. This would help him to achieve, earn money, respect and be an asset to his community over his working life. Alas, CBT steps in to render such things impossible.

Today’s technology makes simultaneous, individualised Basic Skills/Vocational Education possible. All that’s needed is federal leadership and relatively minor investment in software platforms. Such an investment will start momentum for life-long vocational education, surely a driver of national productivity!

Changes to TAFE must encourage collaboration. Imagine if, say, all TAFE hospitality teachers across Australia were able to share and critique lesson plans, identify emerging student learning needs and be involved in the ongoing creation of better student learning resources.

The structures and practices of our national TAFE system must reflect the structures and practices of highly productive workplaces. The alternative is the continuation of waste, duplication, rorting and inefficiencies in our current TAFE arrangements.

A “New Australian” TAFE must model itself on highly productive workplaces. It will point the way forward for our Pacific neighbours and other countries like us facing competition for jobs from far larger and more focused international competitors.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.