Industry News
ACOD - Led Industry Appeal Forces TAFE NSW To Reverse Ban on Text Books
On January 25, 2018, TAFE NSW announced that it will not accept any external purchase orders for the David Wilson text books ‘Practical Optical Dispensing’ and ‘Practical Optical Workshop’, reserving them for only students of TAFE NSW. All non-TAFE NSW registered training organisations in Australia and New Zealand that deliver the Optical Dispensing Qualification Certificate IV in Optical Dispensing use and promote the text books and were therefore suddenly faced with disruption to the delivery of their courses. Withdrawing the availability of the text books without warning at the start of the academic year would have had a serious and damaging impact on the studies of hundreds of trainee dispenser students around Australia and New Zealand.
The Australasian College of Optical Dispensing (ACOD) and other industry members from Australia and New Zealand made various urgent appeals directly to TAFE NSW to reconsider this sudden action to no avail. Therefore, a letter of appeal endorsed by a huge number of industry associations, organisations and prominent individuals was forwarded urgently to the relevant NSW State Ministers in the hope that this action by TAFE NSW could be reversed. The appeal was based on various factors including the sudden disruption to trainee optical dispensers and their courses, the text books had previously been available to the wider industry for years, many of the unpaid contributors to the text books believed they would always be available to the wider industry, and the most recent editions were funded by a private industry group.
After consultation between the Ministers’ Offices, TAFE NSW and ACOD, TAFE NSW agreed to reverse its earlier decision immediately and again offered the availability of both text books to all other Optical Dispensing colleges, book wholesalers and individuals wishing to purchase them up till June 30, 2018. In an email to ACOD on February 13, 2018, the Head of Government Relations TAFE NSW Deputy General Counsel confirmed that “TAFE NSW will continue to fill orders up until 30 June 2018 on commercial terms to non TAFE NSW students”. The same email also confirmed that the time frame for delivery of the many back orders outstanding from 2017 would be 2 - 4 weeks from February 9. However, no agreement regarding the availability of the text books to the wider industry after June 30 2018 has been made to ACOD by TAFE NSW.
