Source: Reserve Bank of Australia
12 May 2025
The Skills Shortage and the Teaching Gap
The skills shortage gripping Australia’s workforce is a vicious cycle. Vocational education is essential to train workers to fill these gaps, but there’s also a shortage of qualified TAFE teachers – who are struggling under high workloads to meet this essential demand.
To close that skills gap, and avoid losing current staff to burnout, the VET sector desperately needs more industry-qualified teachers. But like other Australian employers, TAFE must hire from the same limited pool of skilled tradespeople and professionals.
From Industry to the Classroom
Ten years ago, trade-qualified carpenter Steve Cole turned down a TAFE teaching job because “business was booming” and he had contract commitments. At the time, Cole was keen to share his 30 years’ knowledge of the construction industry, but as the boss of a busy company he felt he couldn’t walk away.
Still, teaching stayed in Cole’s mind.
“I was training people on-the-job and I felt that there were things that I had to give,” he says. Looking ahead to the final act of his career, he liked the idea of “a full circle back to where I started. I had fond memories of TAFE in the ’70s studying carpentry and construction”.
Teaching is an intellectually challenging job that offers great work/life/family balance without the physical demands of industry labour.
“I know as a 62-year-old electrician that I wouldn’t be up crawling around in roofs or out digging ditches,” says Phil Chadwick, NSW Teachers Federation TAFE lead organiser.
Enter: Paid to Learn
To lure mid-career and senior professionals such as Cole, “TAFE NSW had to be a little bit creative in the way that they recruited teachers to encourage people to get off the tools [and] pick up the whiteboard marker,” Chadwick says,
It developed a program that’s unique to NSW: Paid to Learn.
Learning to Teach
There are three prerequisites to become a VET teacher: a nationally recognised qualification in the discipline in which you want to teach, between three and five years of industry experience, and a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment (TAE).
“One of the bigger barriers in attracting tradespeople and professionals out of the jobs that they do is gaining that minimum teaching qualification, the TAE Cert IV,” Chadwick says.
While the TAE course is fee-exempt under the Free TAFE joint government initiative, it still demands six months of full-time study, or 12 months part-time. To a busy professional, that’s a long time without their usual income.
Even juggling part-time coursework with an industry job is tough, as worksite demands compete with the routine and discipline of study. “I wouldn’t advise that,” says Cole.
Early in 2024, he was browsing the ‘I Work for NSW’ public-sector jobs website when he spotted a Paid to Learn carpentry teaching job at Meadowbank TAFE. For Cole, the chief attraction was financial: “I’ve still got bills to pay, a mortgage to pay, and I could learn on the job and be paid a reasonable salary instead of closing my business, having no income and doing it that way.”
Paid to Learn allowed Cole to start working at Meadowbank straight away – with full teaching salary, plus superannuation, leave and other benefits – while refreshing his 11-year-old TAE qualification through an intensive course of 14 weeks.
“Basically from day one, they’re in the classroom teaching,” Chadwick says. TAFE students benefit from their new teachers’ industry currency, as effectively six weeks earlier, they were on the tools.
To soften the impact of hitting the ground running, Paid to Learn also pairs trainee teachers with mentors and supervisors, whose tailored, wraparound support sets them up to succeed.
“I think that’s invaluable,” Cole says now, a year into his new career. “The TAE teaching staff are extremely supportive if you allow them to support you.”
How It Works
“Most of our members that go into the program are employed as permanent full-time or temporary full-time employees,” Chadwick says. “It’s a bit like an apprenticeship or a traineeship, where a person starts the job and then they’re released from work to attend TAFE.”
Cole spent three full days per week in TAE classes at Mt Druitt TAFE, then two days at Meadowbank, shadowing a more experienced teacher. Trade skills teaching has improved since his apprentice days. “It’s a lot more hands-on,” he reflects. “That hands-on approach, theory taught within practical, I think works well for the student cohort that we have.”
Paid to Learn prioritises industries targeted by the NSW skills shortage list: trades such as electrical, carpentry, plumbing, automotive and engineering, and metal fabrication, plus in-demand fields such as community services, aged care and community health.
“In our class, we had two electricians,” says Cole; “I’m a carpenter. We had two cabinetmaker-joiners and we had a fellow from aerospace who trains aeroplane mechanics and service technicians.”
TAFE NSW uses Paid to Learn as an incentive to attract staff to campuses with the most acute needs. “[Teachers] can be recruited based on their trade or profession, but they can also be recruited to a specific location in the state, and that’s what sets the priority,” says Chadwick.
The program was piloted from August to November 2022 in Western Sydney, which is in a construction and energy boom. “So that’s typically why there’s a lot of carpenters, electricians and plumbers in it,” Chadwick says. The next cohort of 47 new teachers start their jobs in March 2025.
Putting Learning Into Practice
The TAE Certificate IV can be academically demanding for trade-qualified professionals, especially if it’s been a while since they were in a classroom.
Though Cole already knew his trade inside out, the TAE course handed him a different toolbox: “teaching methodology and classroom management, and building up effective relationships with the student cohort.”
“[It was a] very steep learning curve for me,” Cole recalls, but he’s relished the challenge. “I learn something new every single day, and I learn things about myself.”
He uses the term “reflective journey” – which he calls “a TAFE-ism” – to describe the introspective, analytical skills he honed during Paid to Learn. “I’ve certainly learned a lot about other people.”
He was particularly impressed by his specialist TAE teacher, “and the lengths she went through to not cut corners at all, but to build our skills up to the level where we pass with confidence.” And he could immediately practise what he’d just learned: “That’s how I teach now, using her as an example.”
He also bonded with the other trainee teachers in his class.
“We’ve socialised since, got together for Christmas drinks and so forth, and talked about our experiences,” he says.
Chadwick says Paid to Learn’s cohort-based approach boosts trainee teachers’ engagement in their studies, and their completion rates, compared to those undertaking the TAE alone.
“The collaborative effort between the students helps each other,” he says.
The Rewards
Of 287 participants in Paid to Learn’s first year, 278 are still teaching – a 97 per cent retention rate.
A full-time TAFE NSW teacher can earn $88,842 to $105,362, depending on their work history. Chadwick concedes industry pay can be higher, “but it’s not the money that they come for, it’s the conditions.”
After an interim review of NSW’s VET system found only 48 per cent of TAFE NSW educators were employed permanently, “it’s a really big improvement that TAFE are taking these people on in secure jobs rather than in casual jobs,” Chadwick says.
They’ll also benefit from the newly negotiated TAFE Commission of NSW Teachers and Related Employees enterprise agreement, which will boost the top salary to around $120,000 by 2027.
Compared to teaching, “running your own business is quite an onerous task – a lot longer hours per week,” says Cole.
Now his kids are adults, he’s happy to trade off the flexibility and control of self-employment for more relaxed work.
Cole was also surprised by how much he appreciated the camaraderie of teaching.
“I was the top dog in my business; that’s a little bit isolating in some ways, and now I’m working closely with people of equal standing within the TAFE hierarchy,” he says. “To feel like I am part of a team, for me, has been a real positive.”
Chadwick says Paid to Learn “is not a magic bullet. On its own, it is not a solution. But it’s definitely a step in the right direction.”
It represents a welcome investment in an education sector whose funding has been volatile and politicised.
Cole, meanwhile, heartily recommends Paid to Learn to other NSW industry professionals contemplating a career change.
“The rewards from teaching aren’t really talked about enough,” he enthuses.
“The regard with which students hold us is something of an honour, really. We’re seen as mentors and people to be trusted, and guides. That’s a lovely position to be in. It makes me feel really good about myself.”
Article by Mel Campbell
This article was originally published in The Australian TAFE Teacher, Autumn 2025