About the research

Current vocational education and training strategies and responsiveness to emerging skills shortages and surpluses by Jack Keating

The Australian vocational education and training (VET) sector is a complex and multi-faceted entity which receives direction and funding from both the Australian Government and the state and territory governments, as well as being influenced by local social and economic imperatives and the historical structure and role of the sector.

This report examines the system’s capacity to adapt to the current and anticipated demand for skills in the workforce, while taking account of the multiple demands imposed by government-determined priorities. Its focus was on the planning processes for publicly funded training.

Key messages

• The planning and funding arrangements for VET in Australia are relatively tight, with limited capacity for market responsiveness. Considerable resources are directed towards these processes, but planners have not paid enough attention to how public funding can stimulate fee-for-service demand and, to a lesser extent, industry and individual investment in training.

• The economic boom has reduced demand for formal VET. In some areas, technical and further education (TAFE) institutes have found it difficult to fill their funded places. The system needs to find ways to strengthen the individual demand for training.

• At the same time, TAFE institutes retain a role in providing tertiary education pathways for school leavers. TAFE institutes are the major provider of second-chance education and also have a growing percentage of teenage students. This poses new challenges for TAFE institutes.

• For the system to introduce greater flexibility, there needs to more interactive and responsive planning which allows for the flow of information from local markets to influence national thinking. This suggests that data collection must have more than a compliance focus.

• Cooperation between providers, public and private, and other agencies can increase local capacity for planning.

• Funding mechanisms should go beyond allocating student contact hours to financing contestable programs and programs delivered by private registered training organisations.
  

This report is one part of a program of work conducted by the National Institute of Labour Studies, Flinders University, and the Centre for Post-compulsory Education and Lifelong Learning, University of Melbourne. A well-skilled future by Sue Richardson and Richard Teese provides a synthesis of that work. Another suite of NCVER-commissioned work examined the role of VET in regional partnerships. This work is summarised in Regional partnerships: At a glance by Tabatha Griffin and Penelope Curtin (NCVER 2007).

Tom Karmel
Managing Director, NCVER

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