Some TAFEs will close, jobs will go and courses will be slashed under Victoria’s budget cuts, unions say.

The National Tertiary Education (NTEU) union says the cuts will reduce base funding to already struggling public TAFE colleges by 22 per cent from next year.

NTEU Victorian secretary Colin Long said it is another step in the dismantling of the state’s public vocational education and training system.

Dr Long said the impact on the quality of training will be severe, and at least two TAFEs have put staff on notice about the financial effects of the cuts.

“It will definitely result in further job losses, reduced course offerings and the closures of some TAFE facilities,” he said.

Dr Long said TAFEs had taken generations to build but were now being dismantled to make way for cut-rate private providers who are not properly regulated.

The government has committed $1 billion over four years to the state’s training system but courses that are not in demand will receive less funding.

Australian Education Union (AEU) Victorian branch secretary Mary Bluett said the TAFE cuts will decimate the sector.

“The decisions of the budget are the most horrendous in the history of TAFE,” she told reporters.

“This government has basically abandoned public TAFE and has put in place a system that will see $300 million pulled out of our public TAFEs.

“Many will struggle to survive.”

A $200 million package has been set aside for school capital projects to upgrade schools and provide new ones.

Schools to receive major upgrades include Galvin Park Secondary College, which will get a $14 million upgrade.

But Ms Bluett said nothing was done to rectify $481 million in public education cuts made in last year’s budget.

She said no funding was pledged for Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL), which provides over 20,000 students who don’t want to complete VCE with hands-on learning.

Ms Bluett said the government needed to recommit to the school building program, which needs $1.7 billion.

“This is warped priorities,” she said.

“We are the lowest-funded state when it comes to public education.”

Opposition leader Daniel Andrews said the cuts targeted the vulnerable, with the education maintenance allowance halved when it provided financial support to the poorest families.

He said abolishing the school start bonus was also a “huge kick in the guts” for families with children starting in prep and year seven.

Meanwhile, $8.3 million committed for early childhood programs, including providing three-year-olds known to child protection services with free kindergarten, was welcomed by Kindergarten Parents Victoria (KPV).

KPV said the programs were vital in protecting vulnerable children before families reached crisis.

at the tafe i went to the electrical course had been stangled of funds for years, PLCs we were using were out dated and often broken requiring us to repair them before use, a multitude of cables would often be tried to see if they were broken

all very useful for fault finding , totally useless for teaching especially when time was limited. often outputs’ fuses were blown meaning no output.

the teachers had given up, one of them would be late for class and then turn up let us in and disappear for another half hour. the teachers had no notes. one of our trainers at my employment had been asked to teach a class and had no notes to work from, i told him that in my experience tafe teachers don’t share notes and when they retire their notes go with them.

practically all subjects are underfunded and badly taught – the staff and equipment are burnt out.

i was asked by someone to coach him before his capstone, three days before the test i asked him what the difference between AC and DC was – he didn’t know! turns out it was ok, he had been provided with all of the answers before the test anyway. the NSW capstone test was much harder with two people watching for cheating continually and prowled the classroom.

the nsw test was harder because we had had to piece together concepts without being taught about it. it was a joke. the company i worked for had to make sure that the people they took on as an apprentice would pass regardless of the teaching standards. of about 1500 people they whittled down the applicants down to 14 people to be taken on.

Education ought to be a federal government responsibility.

My wife works for a Victorian TAFE, and all staff recieved an email, from the CEO, stating “tough times ahead…blah, blah”, and basically saying that there would be job losses.