Business as usual at South West TAFE

Thursday, March 19, 2020 / Coronavirus Student Updates

South West TAFE, along with all TAFEs across Victoria, is continuing to operate as usual but is closely monitoring the COVID-19 crisis and liaising daily with Department of Education and Training (DET) who will provide directive to all TAFEs and schools in regard to our future operations.

Chief executive officer Mark Fidge said it was business as usual with courses running as normal, but TAFE remained vigilant to the potential risk to its staff and students.

“At this stage, there has been no change to our operations but DET is providing daily updates to all TAFEs,” Mr Fidge said. “Until a directive of any change is received from the Department, we will operate as normal in delivering training to our students.”

Mr Fidge said as the situation continued to change rapidly, Management and Incident Response Teams were focusing efforts on planning for how the organisation would adjust its operations to ensure it could adapt as the situation evolved.

“We are preparing for all scenarios and will provide prompt and clear advice if any changes are needed, especially if one of the potential outcomes is temporary closure.”

South West TAFE has increased its cleaning processes and is reinforcing good hand hygiene and cough and sneeze etiquette, and encouraging any students or staff who are unwell not attend any campuses.

The Australian Government on Wednesday called for non-essential gatherings of more than 100 people to be cancelled, and outside mass gatherings of over 500 to be cancelled, but this recommendation does not mean the closure of educational services, including TAFEs, as they are considered essential services by Government.