The Tafe - The challenger institute of technology story

My name is Liz Harris, I'm the Chief Executive Officer of Challenger Institute of Technology in Western Australia. Challenger Institute is a large metropolitan college in Western Australia. We have about 23,000 students every year. We have a thousand staff. We have 8 major campuses and we have 450 courses every year. While we're a large and disperse state we have very high employment. People are in fact less inclined to go into training so we have to find ways to be very flexible, very agile, very responsive in terms of following people into the workplace to do their training. Challenger has over 450 partnerships with industry and the community. We're in partnership with all the major oil and gas companies. We have a large oil and gas training process operations plant which we've been told is the best in the world for training in oil and gas. We've delivered an Australian first in completely in-hospital diplomas. We recently won the Premier's award for what we call our World to Life Program for very disengaged young people. We've had some very very strong outcomes there where young people have moved from Juvenile Justice to picking up Apprenticeships and employment. We chose to apply for the Large Training Provider of the Year because we know we've got a good story to tell. This award is the highest accolade that a training organisation can win in australia. Winning the Australian Training Award has enhanced our profile considerably I think. What that does is validate once again that what you are saying about yourself in your promotion and in the media is actually, has been validated by national judges, national panels. it is a wonderful process to go through because it really helps you to reflect on where you're at as an organisation and it is really a team effort. People really put their backs behind this effort and wanted to show Challenger at it's best and something that they were very proud of doing. Unless staff are onside, unless they're committed, unless they're enthusiatic then they're not going to give of their best and I find that we really have a got a very very strong and committed staff within the organisation. I was just thrilled at how much it meant to people. I believe at Challenger we really do pursue excellence and I think that was displayed during the judging process.