New courses on the cards

By Danielle Galvin
COMMUNITY College Gippsland (CCG) is set to increase the number of courses it offers in Pakenham to meet the growing demand in the shire.
The college offers a limited number of courses at its Main Street premises, but the CEO, Paul Wilson, has revealed that Pakenham will be home to a new site, which will offer a wider variety of courses.
Last week, Mr Wilson said the not-for-profit adult education and training provider was also in partnership with Pakenham Secondary College about a new course to be offered to disengaged young people in the shire.
“We have been talking to the principal and staff at the school about kids who are disengaged from learning,” he said.
“What we’ve done is we’ve interviewed students and ex-students and we’ve started a program which is for the Certificates in General Education for Adults (CGEA).”
The youth CGEA course at Pakenham this term is available to 25 young people who have left school early or at-risk of leaving school early to give them vital foundation skills.
The course officially started last week and will run until the end of the year with plans for it to run next year.
He said the college was looking into expanding in Pakenham to be able to offer more training options.
“We are currently in negotiations to take over a much larger unit (so) we would hope to expand the courses available in the community,” he said.
Mr Wilson said the college was keen to give more options to people in the shire.
“Certainly, at the moment there is a lot more demand than we can meet and we’ll continue to monitor that demand,” he said.
“It is a growth area and there aren’t any other significant VET or TAFE courses, so it makes sense for us to expand our operations there.”
Mr Wilson said the college was not affected by the recent Victorian Government cuts to TAFE funding because the college was funded differently.
“While we receive the same funding support from the State Government for accredited student contact hours, we have not received the funding supplements that TAFEs have,” he said.
“As with the TAFEs, our subsidy rates for some courses has reduced considerably – but we generally have lower overhead costs.
“This means that the recent State Government funding changes will have little impact on our ability to run courses and campuses.”
The college operates the McMillan campus at Warragul and eight other campus locations across Gippsland including its Pakenham campus.
Mr Wilson said it was business as usual at the college with a new term set to begin and all courses open for enrolment.
“Our community services, aged care, youth work, disability, hair and beauty, and rural studies courses are unchanged,” he said.
“We will have some funding reductions in retail, and business courses, but we will continue to run those courses by offering a flexible delivery mode to meet the new state funding model.”