VET provides a second chance

VET has a reputation for being the one education sector with a definite community and equity focus. But is this reputation justified? According to new NCVER research by Tom Karmel and Davinia Woods, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

The study looked at ‘second-chance’ students. Second-chance students are those who either left school early or have not followed the conventional path of completing school and then going directly on to VET or university.

According to the findings, second-chance students represented 40% of publicly funded VET students in 2004. However, the more interesting question is a much more difficult one: exactly what proportion of potential second-chancers actually do go to VET?

This question is very difficult because there is no simple way of tracking the education pathways of individuals across their lifetimes. Oh for a unique student identifier that follows the individuals from pre-school to the university of the third age!

Employing a creative statistical approach, and making use of NCVER statistics and data from the ABS Survey of Education and Training, Karmel and Woods estimate that around 50% of early school leavers access VET before they are 25 years. The numbers also indicate that almost all potential adult second chancers go to VET at some stage  in their lives.

However, despite VET providing many individuals with a second chance at education, an issue of concern is qualification completion. There is not much point going to VET unless substantial skills are acquired, and these are not obtained from the odd module or two.

Estimates from the study suggest that the percentage of the second-chancers leaving the VET sector with a qualification is low, especially at certificate III or higher VET qualifications. As a comparison, the basic qualification in the trades is a certificate III.

“Only around 10% of early school leavers complete a certificate III or higher VET qualification within four years of leaving school. For adults without non-school qualifications it is a little higher,” says Dr Karmel.

“So there is no doubt that VET is the second-chance education sector, but the sector needs to work hard to ensure that a lot more of the second-chancers end up with a qualification of real substance”, he says, “and it’s not because they do not have the ability. Few of the second-chance students drop out because of poor performance”.

Second-chance vocational education and training is available at
www.ncver.edu.au/publications/1831.html