Weekend College for Perth TAFE campus next year

11/12/93

A new Weekend College will open at Perth's TAFE campus next year, allowing part-time students to attend classes on Friday nights, Saturdays and Sundays.

The extended hours will open TAFE education to people who cannot get to classes during week-days or evenings.

Education, Employment and Training Minister Norman Moore announced the initiative today and said weekend classes in a range of courses would be held at the Perth campus of TAFE's Central Metropolitan College.

Mr Moore said the Weekend College was a breakthrough in making education more accessible to more people and would bring extra people and life to Northbridge.

"TAFE courses will be more easily available to such people as those caring for the young or aged, shift-workers, people with disabilities and others who have difficulty travelling at night," the Minister said.

"The innovation will also provide more employment opportunities for TAFE lecturers and support staff, while enabling the Northbridge campus to offer fee-for-service courses to industry.

"It will make greater use of public facilities while giving more students access to scarce and expensive resources."

Mr Moore said the Weekend College would offer programs in Arts, Business and Community Care, designed so that an award course could be completed by weekend attendance.

A Community Adult Education Program in art and language would also be provided.

"Anyone will be able to enrol in the weekend program and existing students will be able to extend their course over seven days or take extra subjects to fast-track their studies," Mr Moore said.

The Minister said part-time study was very popular, with nearly 8,000 people studying part-time at the Northbridge campus, compared with 3,000 full-time students.

More than five per cent of the Western Australian population did some part-time TAFE study.

"Our vocational education and training system must become increasingly responsive to the needs of clients who may not be able to comply with a strict nine-to-five or limited part-time hours regime," Mr Moore said.

He said greatly extended hours were currently being negotiated for the new Joondalup campus of TAFE, where 700 students studied at their own pace and hours, under a unique flexible learning system.  Negotiations were underway to meet staffing and security requirements for almost around-the-clock classes, and to provide electronic communications to the campus.

Mr Moore said he would watch the application of the more flexible hours at Northbridge and Joondalup and would consider whether these could be extended to other TAFE colleges in the future.

Media contact:  Ross Storey 321 1444 / 222 9595