There have been delays in students' ability to borrow library books, log on to computers and access on-campus facilities such as printers because of the systems failures halfway through the teaching semester.

A leaked email chain to TAFE's new managing director Jon Black also reveals that students who graduated last year after spending thousands of dollars on their education have been unable to receive their diplomas because of the ongoing glitches.

It is the second year in a row that the system has created havoc for the vocational education provider, with senior leaders describing it as a "disaster". The EBS system is a part of the government's Learning Management and Business Reform (LMBR) program that has been rolled out across the state over the past decade. A report by the NSW Auditor-General found the program's costs had blown out by nearly $100 million last year.

In December, a NSW upper house inquiry recommended the system be scrapped.

"We find this situation deeply disturbing," the report said. "While TAFE needed to introduce a new IT system to support Smart and Skilled, we have no confidence that EBS can be made to work. The committee can reach no other conclusion than that the EBS system is so dysfunctional that it must be abolished."

Teachers have warned of a "communication breakdown" that has meant students who have signed up to TAFE using the publicly funded VET Fee Help scheme into diploma or certificate IV courses are yet to be enrolled. The botched system has made keeping track of the number of students across the network challenging, with up to 83,000 fewer enrolments across TAFE NSW since 2012.

Sydney TAFE director David Riordan said some delays had been caused by the federal government's new restrictions on VET FEE Help, which were instituted to bring the scandal-plagued private sector into line. "We have a new system and we have larger numbers going through the system," he said. "We used to enrol people twice a year, but we just don't do that anymore, we have ongoing enrolments"

"It is much improved from previous years. With an organisation of our size, there are always going to be some issues, but there may have been delays for a comparatively small number of students out of 30,000. We are comfortable with where we are at."

But teachers say they are spending every day enrolling students and not teaching. "Everyone is pulling their hair out," said a Sydney Institute teacher, who asked not to be named.

A senior NSW TAFE manager said the system was designed to facilitate almost all critical functions for the business flows of the complex organisation, including the promotion of courses, the enrolment of students, taking fee payments and recording communicating results.

"It simply does not work," they said. "Many millions of dollars of revenue has been lost because it couldn't be claimed from students. There has been a massive drop in enrolments because it so hard for students to find out which courses are being offered and the Auditor-General can't approve TAFE's accounts because there are so many anomalies."

Labor skills spokeswoman Prue Carr said it was unacceptable that TAFE teachers were under this much pressure. The system was originally introduced under the former Labor government.

"They are telling me on the ground that they are spending inordinate amounts of time on the computer system when they should be reskilling our young people in particular," she said.

The breakdown comes after a report promoted by NSW Skills Minister John Barilaro described TAFE as "uncompetitive" and "inefficient" by comparing it to a collapsed private college that allegedly signed up illiterate, disabled students for thousands of dollars worth of debt to courses they would struggle to complete. The offices of the college, Australian Careers Network, were raided by the Australian Federal Police last week.

A spokeswoman for  Mr Barilaro said his office was not aware of the issues and forwarded questions about the EBS to TAFE.

In February, Mr Barilaro acknowledged that the EBS system was not meeting needs.

"There is no doubt that the current IT system isn't meeting need. From a TAFE perspective there is a deadline in the first half of this year [for it to perform]," he said.