Year 11 student Alyssa Parkinson would like to follow in the footsteps of her aunty who runs a home hair salon.

She will now have to wait until her Higher School Certificate studies are complete to embark on her career path.

TAFE Riverina education and training manager Sara Morley said “unfortunately” six expressions of interest are not enough for the course to go ahead.

“It depends on the course but usually we need at least 12 students,” she said.

“If the school finds us some more students we’d be more than happy to start the course.”

TAFE runs hair and beauty courses from its Wagga campus.

However Ms Parkinson would need to arrange her own transport to attend class in Wagga.

Ms Parkinson now stays home from school on Wednesday as it was set aside for the TAFE courses.

“It’s boring, I’d rather be at TAFE,” she said.

Mrs Morley explained why TAFE doesn’t offer an online option, “both hair and beauty classes are very practical.”

Labor Candidate for Cootamundra Charlie Sheahan suggested that TAFE should consider running a bus service for rural students, so they can attend class at a more central campus.

He spoke vehemently against cuts to TAFE courses at a recent forum on public education in Cowra.

“Labor has taken the TAFE cuts and threats to privatise to heart and they are going to reinstate it back to where it was," he said.

“To rural and regional kids TAFE colleges are the only training available to them.”

Member for Burrinjuck Katrina Hodgkinson, also at the forum, defended the cuts from a pragmatic standpoint.

“It would be really nice to do all of the courses. I am a former teacher of TAFE,” Ms Hodgkinson said.

“However, I totally recognise these are taxpayers dollars we are using [to fund these courses].

“I totally get those issues [of access to courses and campuses in regional areas] but we are always going to have that in the country.”