More than 40 positions have been affected by TAFE Western’s restructure of its teaching workforce, after the Institute decided to redistribute teaching resources in line with student and industry demand.

“There’s 41 teachers that are impacted, 22.5 of those have no position,” Mr Keeley said.

Eight head teaching positions will go, while the areas of fitting and machining, metal fabrication, mining and textiles will be the hardest hit by teaching staff cuts.

“Obviously a lot of them are devastated. We’re losing some very good, very experienced people,” Mr Keeley said.

“To lose those skills at this time, particularly in regional areas, it doesn’t just impact on students it impacts on the communities [because] with the loss of skills there’s a loss of income in those areas.

“I know some courses are closing, and obviously there’ll be limited provision in some areas.”

Mr Keeley said the centralisation of courses would increase costs to students in more remote communities.

“There’s a limitation with the running of online courses - students have to have the capacity to be able to work online and keep motivated so there’s still the concern of people dropping out of vocational training,” he said.

“Just with the introduction of Smart and Skilled this year 30,000 enrolments fell out of the vocational sector. Over the life of this state government there’s been 83,000 drop in enrolments

“I would expect this to go on until we get some change from government.”

It isn’t all bad news though, with 18.5 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions created in new demand areas including community services, aboriginal health and nursing.

“It’s important we align our teaching resources to areas that students and communities demand,” a TAFE Western spokesperson said.

“There will be no removal of courses from communities where there is demonstrated and consistent student and industry demand.

“From the beginning of 2016, teaching teams will be organised into geographical clusters and aligned to industry training areas. 

This approach will provide a flexible workforce which can better respond to changes in student demand and improve quality training, consistency and efficiency.”

TAFE Western’s 24 college locations will be maintained across the region and programs delivered in response to enrolment demand, the spokesperson said.