Not just TAFE SA - Pilot training in SA
Thread Starter
also from today's Australian:
Training scandals stretch to aviation
Two scandals at Adelaide’s Parafield Airport have raised fears that the training loans debacle has infiltrated aviation, potentially endangering passengers and dashing the career dreams of would-be pilots and maintenance specialists.
On Saturday, The Weekend Australian revealed that a “serious training bungle” at TAFE SA’s aviation training campus had forced the Civil Aviation Safety Authority to suspend parts of the licences of about 90 aircraft maintenance engineers. While details of the failure have not been disclosed, students blamed fast-tracking and incorrect documentation of practical components of the training in an effort to graduate as many as possible.
Today, The Australian reports that another college based at the airport faces closure over an audit finding that it misled students and regulators, and profiteered from state and federal training funding schemes. The Australian Skills Quality Authority investigation found that.......had issued students “multiple contradictory transcripts” . ASQA’s report suggests the school failed to establish students’ capacity to undertake the training , denied them access to vital study resources and blamed their inability to progress on “learning difficulties” . Three former students have applied to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for the cancellation of debts — understood to be about $90,000 each — accrued under the VET FEE-HELP loans scheme. They are understood to have been part of a class of 23 students who enrolled in late 2013, none of whom passed. Their requests for the college to cancel the debts were denied after reviews that dragged on for months.
South Australian senator Nick Xenophon took up the students’ cause during an estimates hearing last October. He told The Australian he had “serious concerns” about the treatment of students who had amassed huge debts under VET FEE-HELP . He said the new revelations suggested a “broader issue” around aviation schools. “It’s such a high-profile , glamorous career, but people just don’t get work out of it.” Some engineers affected by the TAFE SA bungle said it had cost them up to $1000 a week in wages. Others said they were in danger of missing out on job openings or promotions. South Australian opposition spokesman David Pisoni called on the state government to conduct a full audit of TAFE SA processes and qualifications “to ensure this failure isn’t being repeated in other courses” . Greens MP Tammy Franks, who was involved in two recent vocational education inquiries, warned the aviation training scandal was “likely to be the tip of the iceberg” .
Training scandals stretch to aviation
Two scandals at Adelaide’s Parafield Airport have raised fears that the training loans debacle has infiltrated aviation, potentially endangering passengers and dashing the career dreams of would-be pilots and maintenance specialists.
On Saturday, The Weekend Australian revealed that a “serious training bungle” at TAFE SA’s aviation training campus had forced the Civil Aviation Safety Authority to suspend parts of the licences of about 90 aircraft maintenance engineers. While details of the failure have not been disclosed, students blamed fast-tracking and incorrect documentation of practical components of the training in an effort to graduate as many as possible.
Today, The Australian reports that another college based at the airport faces closure over an audit finding that it misled students and regulators, and profiteered from state and federal training funding schemes. The Australian Skills Quality Authority investigation found that.......had issued students “multiple contradictory transcripts” . ASQA’s report suggests the school failed to establish students’ capacity to undertake the training , denied them access to vital study resources and blamed their inability to progress on “learning difficulties” . Three former students have applied to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for the cancellation of debts — understood to be about $90,000 each — accrued under the VET FEE-HELP loans scheme. They are understood to have been part of a class of 23 students who enrolled in late 2013, none of whom passed. Their requests for the college to cancel the debts were denied after reviews that dragged on for months.
South Australian senator Nick Xenophon took up the students’ cause during an estimates hearing last October. He told The Australian he had “serious concerns” about the treatment of students who had amassed huge debts under VET FEE-HELP . He said the new revelations suggested a “broader issue” around aviation schools. “It’s such a high-profile , glamorous career, but people just don’t get work out of it.” Some engineers affected by the TAFE SA bungle said it had cost them up to $1000 a week in wages. Others said they were in danger of missing out on job openings or promotions. South Australian opposition spokesman David Pisoni called on the state government to conduct a full audit of TAFE SA processes and qualifications “to ensure this failure isn’t being repeated in other courses” . Greens MP Tammy Franks, who was involved in two recent vocational education inquiries, warned the aviation training scandal was “likely to be the tip of the iceberg” .
Last edited by outnabout; 6th Sep 2017 at 00:57.
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Wow, surprising isn't it? Privatised education, who'd a thought that corners would be cut when a business has to profit from a service it delivers. From personal experience in the VET FEE-HELP Pilot Training arena a significant cost of the course is complying with government regulation. That's if you decide that you're not going to cut corners in this area!
That the government was too lazy/stupid/couldn't give a rats, about oversight is not the industry's fault. I know of multiple Flying School CEO's that begged the government to get on top of auditing before the whole sector turned to ****.
Now have a look at the vocational education sector and the steaming turd that it has become. Can't get a decent tradesman for love or money. Can't even get some trades, building houses out of alternative products because you can't get a brickie.
It's yet another segment of Australian industry that has become an embarrassing joke. Couldn't manufacture a toothbrush!
That the government was too lazy/stupid/couldn't give a rats, about oversight is not the industry's fault. I know of multiple Flying School CEO's that begged the government to get on top of auditing before the whole sector turned to ****.
Now have a look at the vocational education sector and the steaming turd that it has become. Can't get a decent tradesman for love or money. Can't even get some trades, building houses out of alternative products because you can't get a brickie.
It's yet another segment of Australian industry that has become an embarrassing joke. Couldn't manufacture a toothbrush!
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Hey Hey! I'll have you know that South Australia is "World Class"*1, we have world class green energy*2, a world class new hospital*3, and world class submarines*4 etc. just ask Jay he'll tell you. Also, as our World Class manufacturing is being transformed into a World Class training and development industry that will be producing world class personnel trained to a world class standard!
*1 world class refers to 3rd world.
*2 Our electricity is the most expensive in the world! Now that's class! Of course the whole "green" side of things has been completely offset by all the small generators everybody has had to buy to keep their lights on.
*3 Costs 2.3 billion (most expensive building in Southern Hemisphere, now thats a 1st world class expense) yet almost nothing works. Cant log on to workstations (only 75 licences), theatre lights too low, doctors hit their heads etc. etc.
*4 So the first 12 we built didn't work (only half available at any one time as the others required maintenance) but the next lot will take twice as long and 4 times the budget but the workers should be on $200K plus if they strike enough and have enough stop work meetings.
*1 world class refers to 3rd world.
*2 Our electricity is the most expensive in the world! Now that's class! Of course the whole "green" side of things has been completely offset by all the small generators everybody has had to buy to keep their lights on.
*3 Costs 2.3 billion (most expensive building in Southern Hemisphere, now thats a 1st world class expense) yet almost nothing works. Cant log on to workstations (only 75 licences), theatre lights too low, doctors hit their heads etc. etc.
*4 So the first 12 we built didn't work (only half available at any one time as the others required maintenance) but the next lot will take twice as long and 4 times the budget but the workers should be on $200K plus if they strike enough and have enough stop work meetings.
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But in all seriousness if you've ever had any dealings with the company you get an idea of the dodgy practices going on very quickly.
But in all seriousness if you've ever had any dealings with the company you get an idea of the dodgy practices going on very quickly.
They must have a good relationship with Westpac because 11 of the 12 aircraft that they operate have the bank as registered owner.
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As one of those operators, who love to give new pilots a start and see them grow, the sad fact that one of the reasons for me getting out of Aviation is the quality of VET students that we were receiving in the past few years and the lack of skills in stick and rudder and basic navigation. I never in the past had a reason to distrust a pilot that we sent off into the desert to do a charter, but even after hours of ICUS silly mistakes were still being made that eroded that trust.
With new pilot applications, I ended up with the first questions i asked was, are you self funded and as a kid did you ever build a model aircraft?
The reason was if they took the VET option it would mean we had a flag to access basic skills, and if you wanted to build a model aircraft as a kid your fascination with aviation wasn't a recent thing, but probably they have been researching flight most of their life and have a bigger picture of aviation and basic flight.
The VET fees turned flight training schools into sausage factories, flight training become, I feel, a free for all, a grab for money at the expense of good solid training.
Flight training skills from the VET accredited Orgs in general, declined as they pushed to get pilots out on a budget not their skills. The unprecedented demand for flight training meant new instructors are being brought to line by the company that trained them with very little or no commercial experience. The end result was we, as a commercial operator were having to spend double the ICUS time to check to line a pilot who in general, would panic at the sight of a dirt strip, couldn't handle a crosswind and knew nothing about carby icing, apart from once covering it in a theory class just to mention a few of the issues.
As a side note I feel as a bare minim a basic requirement to start a course to be an instructor they should have at least 1000 hours command time of commercial experience. That way the instructor has the tales and understanding of a commercial environment that they can pass onto the potential commercial pilot.
The number of resumes we started getting since introduction of VET,increased 10 fold however the number of hangar visits declined. The attitude changed from can you hire me, to why wouldn't you want to hire me?
Generally the self funded students that we interviewed still seemed to have the basic skills we always required, mainly due to the fact that flying was their passion, they walked talked lived flying and really had no end goal in sight, but to fly as many aircraft as they can and I have worked 2 to 3 jobs to follow my dream and I am going to be the best I can be. Most it seemed flying was a lifestyle choice not a parental push or a chance for an ego trip.
VET fees may have helped a few dedicated stragglers like the ones i have described above, but the bigger picture here, was that it seems some unscrupulous training orgs just seen the quick grab for cash, expanded quickly and pushed kids, that didn't have it in their heart to become a pilot and push themselves to extra self study. VET fees seemed to encourage the view that they will all pass no matter their eventual different skill levels. Dont rock the boat or we all loose was a feeling I got when I questioned past students about this.
The cynical side of me also thinks the bad training Orgs were happy to just wander along and if students didn't get to standard by just completing the basic mandated course, that would mean they would require extra time and a double dip at the end of the course, however I would hate to think that is the case.
Its a shame that we had to have a black book of training orgs we wouldn't hire from, as time after time the same bad habits appeared in flight checks from the same schools and the fact that our CP even rang some of these schools to say WTF guys, only to have the absolute denial that their students were nothing but first rate. We checked a heap of kids from many different schools sometimes in recent years it would take 20 check rides to get suitable newbie were 20 years ago you would do 5 and have to procrastinate between 4 of them as they were equally as good if not better than our requirements.
What has happened to the skills assessment audits. From my understanding of what I have been told the VET system trainers received the VET fee upfront in full. I maybe wrong and stand to be corrected. If so why wasn't the fee only paid in stages and the pilots skills independently audited before allowing them to progress to the next stage and their next lot of VET funds? That would start the alarm bells ringing a lot earlier and stopped this grab for cash and brought back performance based funding for both the trainee and the trainer and may have saved both the Government a whole lot of money, the trainee a life long debt for a substandard skill that makes them unemployable in a declining GA market.
It leaves a shrinking GA industry with a massive oversupply of potential pilots and in an industry already with other massive regulatory imposed burdens, with having to spend valuable airtime and check and training time just to get a pilot to line.
In my online research of Org in question, with info freely available with a couple of very quick searches, and the documentation provide by the students online, scarily it seems all my points above are verified by the online information .
If this company has lost their accreditation after being investigated by the Australian Skills Quality Authority, good riddance, then how many others are out there, not only in our industry but across the whole skills training industry. This whole debacle should be investigated by four corners or a similar reputable media, they should all be named and shamed and potentially brought to justice for claiming money that they were untitled to, and at the end, bringing a question to the industry of how safe are we now, are all operators out there as pedantic as we were getting a newbie to line? Maybe not, have all our aircraft been maintained by engineers that have a skill level that ensures our aircraft wont fall apart in flight due to poor training as proved by the TAFE debacle, maybe not.
At the end where is CASA in all this, surely they can see the decline in the industry, they must be auditing these training orgs, why did it take the Australian Skills Quality Authority to clip their wings with a big question mark, or are CASA all to busy behind a desk rewriting the regulations yet again????????
Mick
With new pilot applications, I ended up with the first questions i asked was, are you self funded and as a kid did you ever build a model aircraft?
The reason was if they took the VET option it would mean we had a flag to access basic skills, and if you wanted to build a model aircraft as a kid your fascination with aviation wasn't a recent thing, but probably they have been researching flight most of their life and have a bigger picture of aviation and basic flight.
The VET fees turned flight training schools into sausage factories, flight training become, I feel, a free for all, a grab for money at the expense of good solid training.
Flight training skills from the VET accredited Orgs in general, declined as they pushed to get pilots out on a budget not their skills. The unprecedented demand for flight training meant new instructors are being brought to line by the company that trained them with very little or no commercial experience. The end result was we, as a commercial operator were having to spend double the ICUS time to check to line a pilot who in general, would panic at the sight of a dirt strip, couldn't handle a crosswind and knew nothing about carby icing, apart from once covering it in a theory class just to mention a few of the issues.
As a side note I feel as a bare minim a basic requirement to start a course to be an instructor they should have at least 1000 hours command time of commercial experience. That way the instructor has the tales and understanding of a commercial environment that they can pass onto the potential commercial pilot.
The number of resumes we started getting since introduction of VET,increased 10 fold however the number of hangar visits declined. The attitude changed from can you hire me, to why wouldn't you want to hire me?
Generally the self funded students that we interviewed still seemed to have the basic skills we always required, mainly due to the fact that flying was their passion, they walked talked lived flying and really had no end goal in sight, but to fly as many aircraft as they can and I have worked 2 to 3 jobs to follow my dream and I am going to be the best I can be. Most it seemed flying was a lifestyle choice not a parental push or a chance for an ego trip.
VET fees may have helped a few dedicated stragglers like the ones i have described above, but the bigger picture here, was that it seems some unscrupulous training orgs just seen the quick grab for cash, expanded quickly and pushed kids, that didn't have it in their heart to become a pilot and push themselves to extra self study. VET fees seemed to encourage the view that they will all pass no matter their eventual different skill levels. Dont rock the boat or we all loose was a feeling I got when I questioned past students about this.
The cynical side of me also thinks the bad training Orgs were happy to just wander along and if students didn't get to standard by just completing the basic mandated course, that would mean they would require extra time and a double dip at the end of the course, however I would hate to think that is the case.
Its a shame that we had to have a black book of training orgs we wouldn't hire from, as time after time the same bad habits appeared in flight checks from the same schools and the fact that our CP even rang some of these schools to say WTF guys, only to have the absolute denial that their students were nothing but first rate. We checked a heap of kids from many different schools sometimes in recent years it would take 20 check rides to get suitable newbie were 20 years ago you would do 5 and have to procrastinate between 4 of them as they were equally as good if not better than our requirements.
What has happened to the skills assessment audits. From my understanding of what I have been told the VET system trainers received the VET fee upfront in full. I maybe wrong and stand to be corrected. If so why wasn't the fee only paid in stages and the pilots skills independently audited before allowing them to progress to the next stage and their next lot of VET funds? That would start the alarm bells ringing a lot earlier and stopped this grab for cash and brought back performance based funding for both the trainee and the trainer and may have saved both the Government a whole lot of money, the trainee a life long debt for a substandard skill that makes them unemployable in a declining GA market.
It leaves a shrinking GA industry with a massive oversupply of potential pilots and in an industry already with other massive regulatory imposed burdens, with having to spend valuable airtime and check and training time just to get a pilot to line.
In my online research of Org in question, with info freely available with a couple of very quick searches, and the documentation provide by the students online, scarily it seems all my points above are verified by the online information .
If this company has lost their accreditation after being investigated by the Australian Skills Quality Authority, good riddance, then how many others are out there, not only in our industry but across the whole skills training industry. This whole debacle should be investigated by four corners or a similar reputable media, they should all be named and shamed and potentially brought to justice for claiming money that they were untitled to, and at the end, bringing a question to the industry of how safe are we now, are all operators out there as pedantic as we were getting a newbie to line? Maybe not, have all our aircraft been maintained by engineers that have a skill level that ensures our aircraft wont fall apart in flight due to poor training as proved by the TAFE debacle, maybe not.
At the end where is CASA in all this, surely they can see the decline in the industry, they must be auditing these training orgs, why did it take the Australian Skills Quality Authority to clip their wings with a big question mark, or are CASA all to busy behind a desk rewriting the regulations yet again????????
Mick
Thread Starter
Mixed Up, I did hear a story of a Chief Pilot who told the line pilot where to find the keys for an airvan, and talked him through how to fly it over the phone. Line pilot had no previous experience on an airvan.
If this comes on top of inadequate training, then I suspect this might be a recipe for disaster.
But in the brave new world of General Aviation, a freshly minted CPL will soon be able to put up an A board, and advertise and sell commercial scenic flights. Inadequate training, no experience flying hot and heavy, and no supervision by a crusty old CP willing to plant their Size 11s up the backside........I'd love to hear the case for how this will maintain or improve safety.
If this comes on top of inadequate training, then I suspect this might be a recipe for disaster.
But in the brave new world of General Aviation, a freshly minted CPL will soon be able to put up an A board, and advertise and sell commercial scenic flights. Inadequate training, no experience flying hot and heavy, and no supervision by a crusty old CP willing to plant their Size 11s up the backside........I'd love to hear the case for how this will maintain or improve safety.
Great post Mick.
With the rise of these organisations smaller operators with no wish to be tangled up in these schemes because we were busy producing industry-ready quality CPLs found ourselves having to compete with places basically marketing "free flying" and as taxpayers also having to subsidise this.
With the fall of these organisations, stories of student files in skips etc and students left with huge debts and no qualifications, or if they were lucky a CPL that was as much use as a chocolate teapot, there are no winners in the industry, though all that money must have gone somewhere?
Suppliers have to raise their prices for the remaining customers to cover their losses and that has to be passed on to the consumer who can't be blamed for drifting over to RA Aus. And so the downward spiral continues.
There was a flicker of hope that Birmingham would scrap the whole thing but as far as I can tell all that happened was the pot of taxpayers' gold was made slightly smaller.
With the rise of these organisations smaller operators with no wish to be tangled up in these schemes because we were busy producing industry-ready quality CPLs found ourselves having to compete with places basically marketing "free flying" and as taxpayers also having to subsidise this.
With the fall of these organisations, stories of student files in skips etc and students left with huge debts and no qualifications, or if they were lucky a CPL that was as much use as a chocolate teapot, there are no winners in the industry, though all that money must have gone somewhere?
Suppliers have to raise their prices for the remaining customers to cover their losses and that has to be passed on to the consumer who can't be blamed for drifting over to RA Aus. And so the downward spiral continues.
There was a flicker of hope that Birmingham would scrap the whole thing but as far as I can tell all that happened was the pot of taxpayers' gold was made slightly smaller.
Last edited by Clare Prop; 14th Sep 2017 at 02:45.
outnabout, indeed a huge worry; potentially devastating for the operators who have been quietly and safely complying over the years and whose reputations will be sullied when one of those flights ends up as a "terrifying fiery death plunge" all over the news.
These government schemes aren't run for the primary purpose of educating or training anyone. They're run for the primary purpose of getting political mates rich quickly. They're essentially institutionalised and systematic frauds on the taxpayer.
There have already been in-depth investigations of and exposes of where many millions have gone in these schemes. Nothing will change while ever most of the electorate votes Laborial.
There have already been in-depth investigations of and exposes of where many millions have gone in these schemes. Nothing will change while ever most of the electorate votes Laborial.
