Hospitality training
TasTAFE’s Drysdale school once produced hospitality graduates who were keenly sought throughout the industry. We need to get back to that, says
THE story of Drysdale is like a modern Greek tragedy, and a case study on why TasTAFE must change.
Once celebrated as among Australia’s premier tourism and hospitality training colleges, the diminishing status of Drysdale over the past two decades I consider the single greatest failing of our industry.
Back in the ’80s and ’90s, the Drysdale Institute was heavily supported and championed by industry for the quality of its training and the output of work-ready students. It was ingrained within industry, frequently bringing in leading chefs, restaurant, and hotel managers, to teach students, while delivering training in partnership with employers, in the workplace, and in regional parts of the state.
Drysdale graduates were sought out by employers in Tasmania and interstate, and the institute was a source of great pride for our industry.
Tasmania’s own goldstandard VET provider was shepherding Tasmanian tourism and hospitality’s evolution into the more professional and sophisticated industry we know today.
Don’t get me wrong, I know many examples of Tasmanians who have gone through Drysdale over recent years and had fantastic experiences, launching exciting careers in tourism and hospitality.
Anyone training at Drysdale today, or considering sending their son or daughter to Drysdale next year, should go with every confidence that the training will set you on a path full of opportunities across our tourism, hospitality, and events sectors.
But when we aspire to be
the best tourism and hospitality industry in the country, we also need the best tourism and hospitality VET program in Australia.
Tasmanians aspiring to enter our industry should expect the very best tourism and hospitality training available. That must be our standard.
Over the past five years mountains of work and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars have been invested in understanding why, in the eyes of industry, Drysdale no longer meets that standard.
Reports, workforce audits, and industry taskforces made up by some of our best and brightest employers have examined the VET system for tourism and hospitality, and come out with the same sorry story:
have a long-term skills crisis emerging in the tourism and hospitality sectors that is now being exacerbated by Covid and the disruption to foreign workers; THROUGH the 2010s, amid the single biggest expansion of the tourism and hospitality sectors in Tasmanian history, enrolments in Drysdale declined, and course dropout rates increased;
relevance of VET qualifications to employment outcomes also declined, with more than 60 per cent of the tourism and hospitality workforce having no postsecondary qualifications. Employer engagement and confidence in Drysdale has deteriorated with every change of TasTAFE management, government policy initiative (remember Tasmania Tomorrow?), and ministerial direction promoting a new strategy, a new direction, a new focus, a new look, and;
DESPITE sucking up nearly all public funding for tourism and hospitality VET in Tasmania and squeezing out any potential for other training bodies to enter the Tasmanian market, Drysdale still manages to lose money.
It all presents a picture of a monopolistic public service provider stuck in a vortex of inefficiency and lack of accountability, completely out of touch with the needs and priorities of its stakeholders – Tasmanian businesses and the people who want to work in them.
Rather than pointing fingers at why and how we got to this point, the tourism and hospitality industry has always wanted to be a part of the solution in rebuilding Drysdale.
In 2019, a business case was presented to the Tasmanian government to spin Drysdale out as a subsidiary of TasTAFE – a separate commercial business with an industry-based board, its own funding deed and clear accountability for training outcomes.
The nucleus of that Drysdale business case can be found in the government’s proposal to establish TasTAFE as a government business.
From our perspective, this reform is all about providing a more commercial and industry-centred approach to the management and governance of TasTAFE, and greater accountability for funding and training outcomes. It is also about providing more flexibility in the training delivered.
Tourism and hospitality is a 24-hour, 365-day industry located in every corner of the state. Our training cannot be limited to school terms in campuses in the major population centres.
I understand the concerns of those burned by partial attempts at reforming Tasmania’s VET sector. Some have turned to a nonsensical