Australia's national VET data custodian

NCVER News #381

Published
29 June 2016

Last chance to register for NCVER conference

4-6 July 2016, CQUniversity, Rockhampton

The countdown is on with the 25th National Vocational Education and Training Research Conference only days away. Escape the cold and join us in sunny Central Queensland where Australia’s leading VET researchers will share their latest insights.

Registration is open until Friday 1 July – don’t delay, book now!

Check out our new Portal

Next time you visit our Portal you may notice some changes. We’ve been working hard to enhance the site to make it even easier for you to find the latest in research and data. The new Portal now includes:

  • Search functionality, with predictive search
  • Social sharing of our content
  • A new look home page highlighting “What’s new” and “Featured products and services”
  • Mobile responsiveness.

Visit our Portal now.

How is NCVER informing policy and practice?

A new report assesses the impact of our research on two themes: the role of apprenticeships in a modern economy, and the nature of vocations and competencies required by industry. It finds the publications have been widely disseminated resulting in numerous downloads, citations and references by the media. In terms of policy, the research has directly influenced policy documents, as well as informing submissions to various government enquiries. Stakeholders also reported research impact on policies about apprentice completion and commencement rates, the way in which pre-apprenticeship programs are structured, industry training strategies and mentoring support for apprentices.

Apprenticeships and vocations: assessing the impact of research on policy and practice

Is the number of new tradies stabilising?

Overall 171 200 people started an apprenticeship or traineeship in 2015, 10.1% fewer than in 2014, but trade commencements showed signs of stabilising at year’s end according to the December 2015 quarter data. Over the year (2015), there were 0.3% more trade commencements than in 2014.

Apprentices and trainees 2015, December quarter

Register for NCVER webinars

What's the secret of organisations with completion rates around 90%?

Join us on 4 August to hear how social support practices in the workplace contribute to health and well-being, in turn improving the completion rates of young apprentices as they transition from school to work. In this webinar lead researchers and employers involved in the research will talk about the key findings and essential ingredients to success. The webinar will appeal to those interested in vocational training, apprentices, mentoring, industry and economic performance, health and social policy.

More information and to register

Vulnerable workers and occupational mobility

Transferable skills are increasingly important for occupational mobility and securing employment in a changing labour market. Register for our webinar on 11 August to hear how workers who are facing redundancy or who have been made redundant understand the importance of transferable skills and seek to apply them in finding new jobs and/or making choices to retrain.

More information and to register

The benefits of data integration

NCVER has partnered with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to link NCVER’s training data from 2006 with 2011 with Census data allowing us to gain critical insights into the post-school outcomes for students undertaking VET in Schools.

The project demonstrated that students who do VET in Schools and do not go on to higher education have better engagement and employment outcomes. It also showed that male Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students who do VET in Schools are more likely to complete Year 12 and that male VET in Schools students who study a trade gain better employment outcomes. NCVER is currently conducting further research using the linked dataset.

For more information

LSAY cohort reports updated

The LSAY cohort reports and pivot tables for the 2006 and 2009 cohorts have been updated to include data from the 2015 surveys. These reports summarise the 'learning and earning' activities of young people in a series of tables containing information on employment, education, study and work, and social indicators starting from when the cohort was first surveyed. The data presented can be filtered by demographic groups and downloaded into Excel.

www.lsay.edu.au/data/latest.html

Browse authors in VOCEDplus

NCVER’s VOCEDplus research database contains works of over 60 000 authors, both individuals and organisations. The Browse by Author feature allows you to view all authors in VOCEDplus. Each name is hyperlinked to items they have authored. The VOCEDplus team encourages researchers to submit their work for inclusion in the database. Please refer to the selection criteria and How to submit to VOCEDplus for guidelines and information.

A new section being added to the Pod Network pages is ‘Featured author’. Check out the featured author profiles on the Pathways and Policy and governance Pod pages. More authors will be featured on the other Pod pages in the coming months.

Have you heard about Twitter lists? They are curated groups of Twitter accounts and provide an effective way to view and manage tweets by category. They let you filter tweets to show only those from individuals and organisations who are on the list, even if you are not following these accounts. The VOCEDplus team has created a number of lists in Twitter that you can subscribe to, including Authors in VOCEDplus. If you are an author in VOCEDplus and on Twitter, but not yet on our Authors in VOCEDplus list, let us know and we’ll add you in. You can contact the team via voced@ncver.edu.au.