Report 5

Audit Results Report – Annual 2015 Financial Audits and Opinion on Ministerial Notification

Auditor General’s overview

This report summarises the results of the annual audits of the 4 public universities and their subsidiaries and the 11 state training providers (now referred to as TAFE colleges) for the year ended 31 December 2015, as well as a small number of various other audits. The report completes the 2015 annual audit cycle.

We issued clear audit opinions for all universities and state training providers on their financial statements, controls and key performance indicators. We identified and reported a slightly larger number of financial and IT control weaknesses to the educational institutions in 2015 compared to the prior year. However, we are pleased that the institutions had evidently given a higher priority to addressing prior years’ IT weaknesses than in the past.

Our review of annual and long service leave liabilities of the tertiary education sector highlighted a $10.4 million reduction in total leave liabilities over the year. This was against the recent trend of increasing leave liabilities, not just in educational institutions but amongst government agencies in general. The reduction to a large part was due to a voluntary separation scheme accepted by 231 employees of state training providers.

Overall the institutions were audit ready earlier this year and the quality of their financial statements presented for audit was generally better than prior years. Six institutions achieved our best practice status for good financial controls and reporting practices.

We have again included selected financial indicators and key performance information in this report. Some of this information was also contained in individual annual reports. However, I hope that inclusion of this information in a single report will provide Parliament with information that is useful for assessing the overall performance of the tertiary education sector. In particular, the information should provide a milestone view of the financial position and performance of the vocational education and training sector prior to its restructuring in April 2016 when the number of colleges reduced from 11 to 5.

 
Page last updated: May 10, 2016

Back to Top