Research

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Research

The socio-economic status of vocational education and training students in Australia

The purpose of this research was to establish the relationship between socio-economic status and participation and achievement in the vocational education and training (VET) sector. The research investigated the extent to which training opportunities provided by the public VET system are taken up by people from different socio-economic backgrounds.

There is a considerable body of Australian and international literature on the relationship between socio-economic status and education, with previous research identifying a strong relationship between socio-economic status and education participation and achievement in both the secondary and higher education sectors. In general, the research has found that students from higher socio-economic backgrounds have greater participation and achievement in these education sectors than students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. However, the limited research on socio-economic status and the VET sector suggests that this is not the case in the VET sector.

To investigate the relationship between socio-economic status and participation and achievement in VET, we applied an aggregate area-based index of socio-economic status produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to the National VET Provider Collection maintained by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER).

Since the 1980s, the ABS has been using data gathered in the censuses to generate indexes that summarise socio-economic status within various geographic areas in Australia. These indexes are known as the Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA). The indexes have gained acceptance as a useful—albeit broad—indicator of socio-economic status and have been used in analysis of the socio-economic status of school and higher education students in various studies. For example, Mukherjee (1999) used these indexes to examine school selection, while Stevenson et al. (2000) examined the relationship between socio-economic characteristics and access to VET and university and participation rates in metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions.

The limited research on socio-economic status and the VET sector has concentrated on sections of the VET population. McIntyre et al. (2000) investigated the application of the Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas to VET in Western Australia, and McIntyre (2000a, 2000b) has undertaken research on VET participation in Melbourne and Sydney. However, no research has examined the relationship between VET participation and socio-economic status using the NCVER national data collection.

The focus of this project was the student population enrolled in the public VET system in Australia in 2001. The statistics included in this publication are derived from the national collection of data from VET providers, in accordance with the Australian Vocational Education and Training Management Information Statistical Standard (AVETMISS) release 3.0. The 2001 national data collection was selected because it was considered most applicable to the 2001 Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas, compiled from the 2001 census. Data from future VET provider collections could be utilised for further research in this area.

The major aims of this study were to:

compare the overall socio-economic profile of students in the VET system with the working-age population as well as with students in higher education, using the Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas
compare VET participation rates for different segments of the VET population (for example, different age groups)
compare subject completion rates and student satisfaction for different segments of the VET population
determine the socio-economic status for the identified segments of the VET population using the Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas
map the distribution of identified segments of the VET population using CData2001 (software program)
examine participation, achievement and satisfaction of VET students according to socioeconomic status
compare the socio-economic profile of VET students in various regions (that is, capital cities, other metropolitan centres, rural and remote).

The basic methodology adopted in this research was to use the 2001 socio-economic indexes to allocate socio-economic scores to VET clients according to their residence (postcode). The 2001 Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas has four different indexes available. However, it was considered appropriate that only one index be applied to the national VET data collection, at least in the first instance. The Index of Economic Resources was selected because it was not biased towards education levels or qualifications of people, and because economic resources play an important role in a person’s ability to undertake VET.

This research found a strong relationship between participation and socio-economic status in the Australian VET sector. VET participation was greatest in low socio-economic areas (12.7 students per 100 population), a figure significantly higher than the national participation rate (10.8%). By contrast, high socio-economic status areas recorded a significantly lower participation rate (8.7%) compared with the national average and other socio-economic regions.

The over-representation of students from low socio-economic areas is partly due to the high participation of students from regions outside the capital cities, which tend to be low socioeconomic areas. Students from remote (16.4%) and rural (13.8%) regions have significantly greater VET participation than students from non-capital metropolitan areas (10.6%) and capital cities (9.5%).

Students from low socio-economic areas are more likely to study lower-level qualifications, especially non-award/miscellaneous education (32.5%) and certificate I and II levels (31.8% combined), rather than certificate III and IV levels (28.7% combined) or diploma or higher levels (6.8%).

This research found that students from lower socio-economic areas obtain ‘better than average’ achievements. Students from low socio-economic areas were awarded a higher proportion of qualifications (30.5%) than their share of total enrolments (28.8%).