Enrolments at Dapto TAFE fell by more than 20 per cent last year as "gutting" continued at the once-busy site.
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Just 274 students attended the sizeable Fowlers Road campus throughout 2013.
Queried in parliament, Education Minister Adrian Piccoli disclosed the enrolment number after months of speculation by unions and area Labor MPs, but added such data would be kept secret in future under the government’s incoming Smart and Skilled reforms, which will create new competition between public and private tertiary bodies.
‘‘The release of enrolment data for individual colleges under the new VET environment of Smart and Skilled could commercially disadvantage those colleges,’’ the minister wrote in response to the question, by Shellharbour MP Anna Watson.
‘‘As a consequence, it will no longer be provided.’’
Ms Watson said the move to secrecy was ‘‘disturbing’’ and called on the government to boost investment in the campus.
‘‘Staff numbers at Dapto have fallen down to 89 teachers,’’ she said.
‘‘We’ve seen the closure of the library, the IT services, and we’ve seen the financial unit being moved out to West Wollongong. The [government] will gut it until there are no enrolments, and just sell it off.
‘‘It’s insane to think any government would [do] this, given the growth of this area.’’
Keira MP and Shadow Minister for Education Ryan Park said the area’s above-average rate of youth unemployment made the case for strengthening, not winding back the campus
"It is not good enough that we are seeing a continual decline in a TAFE that serves a growing community...with a higher than average youth unemployment.
‘‘This is the type of infrastructure we need to be investing in to grow our local economy, not reducing investment to try and make it harder for people to get an education and to get an advancement in their career,’’ he said.
Questions to the minister were forwarded to a Department of Education and Communities spokesperson, who pointed to the government’s ‘‘considerable investment in facilities at Shellharbour and Yallah campuses to provide training linked to areas of employment growth’’.
‘‘The investment at the two campuses provides access to training to people in the southern Illawarra region.’’
The spokesman did not answer questions about the future of the Dapto site.