Indian students take aim at Australian flying school

Sydney: A Sydney flying school was using unqualified trainers to teach large numbers of Indian students in a “critical” breach of standards, the State Government’s education watchdog says.
The school – run by a husband-and-wife team – is facing deregistration after initially failing to answer questions about using trainers who do not have appropriate qualifications and its dealings with overseas students over hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition fees.
Nine Indian students have come forward to claim Sue and Zane Davis’s company, Aerospace Aviation at Bankstown, did not deliver the training promised, leaving them without qualifications and out of pocket.
The NSW Government’s Vocational Education and Training Accreditation Board has served the school with a number of non-compliance orders after an audit of its operations. A spokesman, Liam Thorpe, said its audit was conducted in response to the student complaints.
“[The board] audited Aerospace Aviation and identified a range of non-compliances with national quality standards for the delivery of vocational courses to international students,” Mr Thorpe said. “Of these, the use of trainers who do not have the qualifications required by the Australian Quality Training Framework was considered to be a critical non-compliance that required action.”
Pushpinder Kaur, from Hyderabad, said her husband Inderjeet Singh died after the family had to re-mortgage their home to send their son Prabmeet Singh to Australia for tuition.
While the aviation school had nothing to do with his death, she believes her husband’s heart attack was brought on by the stress of dealing with the school.
Prabmeet Singh had enrolled to attend over a 52-week period to October 2008. The family said they paid fees amounting to $43,500 in eight monthly instalments for tuition and 200 hours of flying to obtain a commercial pilot’s licence.
Mrs Kaur alleges her son was able to obtain only 97 hours of flying to February 2009, and the school asked for more money from them.
Last week the students’ first legal attempt to recover their fees failed in the NSW Supreme Court. They were told that their statutory demand was the incorrect legal avenue for seeking a refund.
11/07/09 Heath Gilmore/The Sydney Morning Herald/brisbane times, Australia