I did year 10 at Tafe(CGVE), then progressed to HSC program...we basically at my Tafe have very good teachers but very bad facilities for the senior secondary as its all government funded and the government may not pay much towards public schools in the scheme of things but this part of tafe gets even less. We get none of the things that most highschoolers consider mandatory- no formals, proms, jerseys, athletic events. But far worse is that we have no LOTE, no theatre or music studio or anything so we have none of the creative arts at my campus, there is also a trend away from courses requiring major works, so that society and culture is the only major work course permitted at my campus, I have to travel forty minutes to go to Wollongong just so I can do ext2 english and it takes just as long to get to ext 2 maths at Bankstown, not to mention that I have to take several night classes. So to sum up, the Tafe system and its flexibility are good, the fact that the government has cut funding so severely from it is bad as several campuses last year stopped offering year 10-12 all together because of budget cuts.
But with Tafe the main differences are that your periods each day can go up to 3 hours each, you can choose however many courses you want to do and they won't make you enroll in anything you don't want or prevent you for that matter, you don't wear uniforms, you call your teachers by their first names, you can have flexible timetables, you can have night classes and you dont have term 4.