Howard legacy: run down education

"The legacy of the Howard/Costello partnership is one of broken skills and wasted opportunities," said AMWU National President, Julius Roe.

"We trail the OECD on many key indicators relating to education and training. The last decade has been a decade of neglect.

"The proportion of Australian adults with at least upper secondary education is now below the OECD average;

• A very high proportion of the existing working age population (50.1%) have no post school qualifications and that proportion is higher than the most productive economies;
• Australia ranks near the bottom of the OECD in terms of the growth rate of science and engineering graduates;
• Our national investment in early childhood education is well below the OECD average.
• Despite the long economic boom, participation rates in Australia are far too low when compared to the most productive economies;
• There are still more than 11% of the workforce who are either unemployed or underemployed;
• The number of existing workers completing higher level VET qualifications has declined significantly in the recent years.
• Despite the millions of dollars that have been ploughed in to VET the qualification completion rate in the 15-24 cohort is estimated to be 23.7%;
• Completion rates for traineeships are very low and completion rates for apprenticeships in the key trades have declined significantly during the last decade;
• Levels of public investment in all levels of education and training are well below the leading economies and have been declining at the very time that other leading economies have dramatically increased their investment.

"We call on Mr Howard to put the interests of Australia first and to stop undermining state based public training institutions such as TAFE. He should be reversing the funding decline that he has been responsible for now that he is apparently awash with taxpayers money.

"An investment in TAFE education and training infrastructure would be less likely to put upward pressure on interest rates and would be a far more effective contribution to alleviating skills shortages than this drip feed of Technical Colleges and American style Military Academies." Mr Roe said

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