Vocational Voices: Season 10, Episode 2
Please note, at 01:06:23 Bridget Wibrow's presentation title has been recorded as Strengthening pathways into VET and beyond for a diverse range of learners. The correct title is Understanding what drives students to pick a particular RTO – a focus on student support services.
Centering diverse voices and support in VET
Steve Davis (00:04)
Welcome back to Vocational Voices and the second part of our Best of ‘No Frills’ 2025 series. I'm Steve Davis. In this episode Centring diverse voices and support in VET, we shift our focus to the human element, highlighting specific voices and providing targeted support for diverse learners. We'll delve into amplifying the voices and perspectives of First Nations people in VET, and supporting learners from diverse backgrounds in VET.
So let's continue our conversations now with more leading experts from the ‘No Frills’ conference.
Steve Davis (00:46)
Our first guest in this episode is Anissa Jones, an Indigenous academic specialist at University New South Wales. Anissa's presentation, Bayabuni: the voiceless place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in VET policy, critically examined the prevalence of deficit discourse in VET policy documents.
Anissa, welcome.
Anissa Jones (01:10)
Thank you for having me. It's great to see you again.
Steve Davis (01:12)
Now, Anissa. Your research examines deficit discourse in vet policy documents. Can you explain what that looks like in practice and why it's problematic for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners?
Anissa Jones (01:26)
Yeah, great. So basically some terminology that is clearly identified and I talk about in my presentation is the disadvantage, words like disadvantage, less likely, poor outcomes and even closing the gap can be identified through several more current and recent documents, including the New South Wales Vet Review for one example.
The problem with deficit discourse is that it provides the reader with the opposite assumption. So when we look at disadvantage, we think of the negative as opposed to people who are at risk of or who may need additional supports. So the way that the terminology is placed in the document gives the reader the misconception that we are very poor outcomes and we need all this paternalistic sort of assistance, which can become quite borrowed by government in particular and then put into various other systems, whether it's internal policy writings of RTOs or the broader community. It's just the viewpoint that people can see when they read those documents. It doesn't position Aboriginal people in a good way, the light is very much in the negative. And I think that's one of the things that desperately needs to change.
And that even comes down to images of Aboriginal people that are being used in the same policy documents. You know, we see Aboriginal women in roles of caring or early childhood or nursing. But we then we see Aboriginal men in terms of plumbing and carpentry, but we actually don't see the swap either. So those sorts of... it's discursive trickery in a way and Hobart talks a lot about that. And I think that needs to change as well. It's how we are viewed as opposed to how can we as community members work with policy writers, RTOs to build a better experience for Aboriginal people in VET.
Steve Davis (03:30)
The removal of cultural safety requirements from the draft SRTOs 2025 based on limited consultation, I know, exemplifies how Indigenous voices can be marginalised. What are the real consequences of decisions like this for learners and communities?
Anissa Jones (03:49)
In the terms of that clause, just so everyone knows, because it has been removed from the site. The original clause or standard, I should say, was to ensure the cultural safety for First Nations staff and learners in the governance section of the standards. So having that removed, the impact for staff, whether they’re support staff or they're teaching staff or even administration staff in an RTO, they are not as protected as say the students would be under the new standards.
The impact that it has though, we probably won't see for quite some time because everyone's still focusing on we've now got these new standards, we now need to implement them. But I think one of the problems that has arisen from this, and I've raised it for the last two years is many, many concerns is that there's a lack of a distinct voice in supporting cultural safety. That is a huge concern. That there is no culturally responsiveness in even the student support section. I mean, you look at the we want to go into the TAE and I know people will be like, she went there. But the TAE itself, you know, it doesn't provide the teachers the understanding of how to work and educate Aboriginal people, you know.
So if it's not in the governance section, it's not as strong when you look at the student support section. It just talks about culturally diverse students, so that you just throw everybody in. But this was specifically this governance clause was specific for Aboriginal people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
It's going to be a bigger, it's almost like a ripple effect. You know, we see that Aboriginal people as staff in particular aren't supported in the standards. Then we see that the curriculum doesn't match up to, we don't have enough Aboriginal teaching staff. How do we do that? Well, we need to make the workplace culturally safe. Well, that's gone out of the standards. We don't have curriculum. We don't have enough people teaching in the curriculum space that have that lived experience, which then has a bigger impact on what's actually being delivered in the courses that RTOs are teaching.
And then we also have the other step where we go the other way, where our curriculum goes into ASQA to be assessed for reaccreditation or accreditation as a whole. And I've had RTOs disclose to me that they've sent their culturally responsive curriculum up that way and being told, that's not how we do it. You need to take it back and review it. Yet when they've gone through the checklist provided by ASQA, they've met all the requirements. It's the cultural knowledge that was missing from the assessor.
And so trying to find Aboriginal people in ASQA to assess the curriculum in a culturally responsive way is also another area that's missing. So it's almost like a three-pronged approach that has really let down First Nations people in there.
Steve Davis (06:45)
I'm about to use the term paradigm shift. It's something that is used a lot, sometimes too much, but there are cases where it is really the only term to use. And your presentation is one, it calls for a paradigm shift that centres Indigenous voices rather than simply consulting with communities. What's the practical difference between those approaches?
Anissa Jones (07:08)
When you consult someone, you're talking to them. When you engage with people, you're talking with them. And I think that's the simplest way to put it. Are we listening to learn or are we listening to respond?
We need to value the knowledges of everybody, as opposed to, you know, just we consult, we tick a box and then off we go. I think when we engage Aboriginal people from the start of policy development or from the start of curriculum development or basically from anything, we are demonstrating a respect and valuing of the knowledges that Aboriginal people hold. And we're willing to work with them. When we do it at the end or in the middle, it really has shown a lack of respect. And it really doesn't prioritize cultural safety. So we keep wanting to push things out, but we need to engage more, you know, that practice of knowing, being and doing and how do we get there?
And in the centre of it, in my workshop, sorry my presentation, I had an image of a venn diagram and in the centre of that is collaboration. So we need to be coming together to co-design. And if Aboriginal people aren't at the table, we shouldn't have the table there at all until they're at the table.
And that includes grassroots people, because we do have people who sit on advisory bodies. And that's great. But the downside of that is, are they there because they're Aboriginal only? Do they have the vocational education and training background to be an active participant? Do they have the cultural knowledge? Are we just getting people together to say we've got an advisory body, but are they connected to their communities? Do they know what's going on in regional and remote parts of this country? Those sorts of criteria are really, really important.
We've just seen that the JSA are pushing now to have a First Nations advisory board. And my question to them would be all of those. Have they got the VET experience? Just because someone's in education doesn't mean that they know VET. And I think that's the complexity of it all, that it's just education so we'll just throw everybody at it. As opposed to having experts in their fields, as well as having Aboriginal experts in their fields. That's the sort of thing that needs to change.
Steve Davis (09:29)
Now you advocate for integrating Indigenous knowledges into all aspects of VET not just programs specifically designed for Indigenous students. How would that reshape the broader VET system?
Anissa Jones (09:42)
Oh, in a perfect world. Well, we do have some brilliant examples already in the VET space, places like Tranby and Tauondi and NAISDA. But they're Aboriginal run and led RTOs. They've been able to maintain their cultural connections, but also maintain the accreditation and all of the requirements of an RTO.
I think we need to see in terms of non-Aboriginal led RTOs, we need to see them working with Aboriginal RTOs to say, well, what's actually working? How were you able to do this? It's a shame that clause disappeared because there was an opportunity for the Aboriginal RTOs to take the lead and train up everybody and provide more employment opportunities for Aboriginal people in this space and get everyone to come across together. Now, that is reconciliation in a sense of Aboriginal people doing that and supporting a clause that was vital.
But I think we need to see a lot more of the co-delivery in particular for RTOs if they don't have an Aboriginal person that has a TAE, you co-deliver with someone who holds the TAE. It's not unheard of, but it also engages the local community knowledge. It provides employment opportunities for Aboriginal people and it shows Aboriginal students in particular that I could do that. I could be what Uncle's doing. I could be that teacher. I could come and do the TAE and I could become a trainer because uncle's been and done all this sort of stuff. So I think there's a good way to do it, but it also then allows for the co-designer curriculum. The more Aboriginal students we have who turn into trainers, the more likely we're going to have a more culturally responsive curriculum.
And that could be centred around valuing Indigenous knowledges for the students in their learning. Teaching from cultural strengths approach as opposed to just, oh look, we're going to do one session on Aboriginal stuff and that's it. It should be peppered all the way through, you know, making connections to students' lives, promoting their successes. You look at things like NAISDA, for example, they've got an 87% completion rate, success rate. We don't talk about things like that. That's three times the national average. What is NAISDA doing? They're doing some great things in terms of engaging with communities. They're providing accommodations for students. Their curriculum is culturally responsive, but they are what we would deem a private RTO and yet they're doing some great work in this space.
I think we need to work with Aboriginal RTOs who are best practice and we need to have mainstream RTOs engage with them at that extent. But it also comes from ASQA. ASQA has to lead the way in that sense, if they're going to create the standards, they should have thought about this before they released them and made those changes. But in a perfect world, that's what would have happened.
Steve Davis (12:52)
Anissa in closing, for VET practitioners who genuinely want to move beyond deficit-based approaches, what are some concrete steps they can take in their daily practice?
Anissa Jones (13:05)
For them, they need to be proactive instead of reactive. So engage with the local communities. You know, we have Aboriginal support staff whose work is to engage community. So have a yarn with them, see what they think, go out with them on a visit, meet the community. I think that's a great way because then the community see you and identify you.
We need to prioritise cultural safety across the board. But we also need to listen and value our Aboriginal staff, students and communities, invest in culturally safe spaces. And that could be, you know, a room, it could be where people can come and have a cup of tea and just a yarn. It doesn't have to be massive.
But we also need to support Indigenous led initiatives. And that could be when staff are saying, look, why don't we look at the local community and engage with them. Get them involved in the course design and delivery that way. I think that's the sort of things that we should be doing and in 2025, it shouldn't be deemed as a new concept. But I think once we've done that, I think we'll be on our way to making hopefully some good change in VET.
Steve Davis (14:14)
Anissa, thank you for again being part of Vocational Voices.
Anissa Jones (14:18)
Thank you.
Steve Davis (14:28)
Next up, we welcome Liam Frost-Camilleri, an academic at Federation University Australia. Liam's presentation, Anchors in the chaos: the role of teachers in fostering well-being in VET pathways, explored how teachers in second chance education institutions support diverse learners.
Liam, welcome to Vocational Voices.
Liam Frost-Camilleri (14:53)
Thanks so much for having me, Steve.
Steve Davis (14:55)
Liam, you describe teachers in second chance education as, and I'll quote, emotional anchors in chaotic classrooms. Can you walk us through what that looks like in practice and how it contributes to student wellbeing?
Liam Frost-Camilleri (15:10)
Yeah, look, it's very interesting. In this research study, I wanted to target the students who had disengaged from mainstream education. So we're talking about that stubborn 20% that over the last 30 years didn't complete VCE and had difficulties with it.
And when I looked into these spaces, very interestingly, there was a chaotic nature to them. Sometimes there's noise, sometimes there's people sitting in the corner on the floor. There was all sorts of different things going on. And these are learners that we know in this sort of space really struggle with the let's just sit in lines, you know, and just pay attention to the teacher, take notes. It's not the traditional view or the traditional sort of methods that reach them.
So generally second chance education institutions, what they tend to do is be extremely individualised. So what that will entail for them is everything becomes up for grabs. Not just the way we teach, but the way the classroom is structured, the times of the day, the sort of clothes the students are allowed to wear, what they're allowed to talk about, what they can do with the curriculum. It very much is a throw out everything, just not the baby. And let's see what we can actually do to actually engage and connect with you in order to ensure that you'll move from a student who was really disconnected from the mainstream education. I like to actually use the word damaged from mainstream education, and towards a student who has the sort of agency and the feeling that, I can actually do this. I can actually change my stars. You know, this can actually work for me. There's a lot of chaos in these classrooms, but it's somewhat controlled and on purpose.
Steve Davis (17:14)
I get the impression. I like the way you described that of that little spark, it's almost like you're nurturing back to life that little spark of intrinsic engagement and drive.
Liam Frost-Camilleri (17:26)
A hundred percent. And it's one of those things, the things that we know about engagement in terms of the research, the three sort of areas, one of them's behaviour, the other one's cognitive and the last one's emotional. And the behaviour one, of course, is just sort of rocking up and just sort of being there and handing in assignments and doing the thing. So it's very sort of robotic. Whereas the cognitive is, are you actually challenging me at a level that I need to be challenged at? But the emotional is the one that these teachers tend to target the most.
Now, in one of the questions you sent me originally, you sort of said, you know, we want to explore what pedagogies do they actually use? Every single one of them, whenever I pressed anybody in this study, every single one of them talked about a readiness or a pre-pedagogy. None of them talked about how do I actually teach reading or how do I teach writing or how do I teach? None of them actually talked about the work. They all talked about preparedness to learn, which was fascinating to me.
Steve Davis (18:25)
That just reminds me, I think this is attributed to Abraham Lincoln, it might be someone else who said, if I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.
Liam Frost-Camilleri (18:37)
Yes, and it's exactly like that. And if you think of this, from an emotional perspective, if you're the type of student who is perhaps neurodivergent and when you went to mainstream education and they said to you for the third time that week, you're wearing the wrong socks and you tried to explain to them, I can't wear the other ones because the seams hurt my feet. And they say to you yet again, doesn't matter. You have to wear the right socks. I'm going to suspend you if you don't come with the right socks tomorrow.
The emotional regulation, the emotional connection is completely gone. The cognitive connection is gone. And of course the behavioural, all I'm going to do is try to hide my socks by wearing longer pants or I'm going to try to do something is again showing that that engagement is lost.
Whereas in these environments, they'll say, g’day, Steve, they're cool socks you're wearing today.
Steve Davis (19:31)
And then it's a non-issue.
Liam Frost-Camilleri (19:33)
It's not an issue. So that's the other thing that they will do. They'll completely challenge the paradigm of the student teacher relationship. Now I'm not saying that they're friends. It is very clear that they are the teacher and these are the learners, but they are not authoritarian. They are not the sort of people who are looking to catch them out. So one of the clearest examples of this was one student who said to me, I once said that my mental health was really bad in class. And when I brought it up to the teacher, the teacher said, well if you need to go home, then you need to go home. Your mental health comes first. And she said to me, I would never have heard that in a mainstream school. And I think she's right.
Steve Davis (20:19)
Something that came through was flexibility and student-centred culture.
Liam Frost-Camilleri (20:25)
Yes.
Steve Davis (20:26)
How, what sort of role do they play in this work in serving disenfranchised students?
Liam Frost-Camilleri (20:32)
When I did this study, it was just as VCAL was turning into the VCE VM program. The teachers in particular were quite angry about it. They were very upset. They said that the VCE VM program was a little too academic and it gave them less flexibility around, ensuring industry connections or community connections and these sorts of things. They felt like it was limiting in some ways. Now that may have changed because it's been a few years now and we're looking at refinements and everything.
But in terms of flexibility, it is a case of this is the overall idea. So we need to do something in the reign of literacy, numeracy, and connecting with community. We need to do something in that. What would you guys like to do? And it becomes completely student driven, particularly when they're in the senior sort of levels or years of these. So the students come up with activities and projects and things that they'd like to do, and it happens and it becomes something within their institution or within their community.
The flexibility, so when I say flexibility, I'm not just saying, you know, we've got an assignment and you can either present it as a PowerPoint or you can speak it. I'm saying the whole curriculum is almost up for grabs. There was one place in particular where they had, and this is actually quite common, but they had, an espresso sort of machine or a big coffee machine where the students were learning how to make coffees. As soon as I walked in, then the first thing they said, can I make you a coffee? What coffee do you like?
They also had, they were exploring animal therapy. They had a rat, a pet rat in the room. And there was only one rule about this rat. Her name was Mercy. There was only one room rule, she wasn't allowed to be on the ground. Because once she got on the ground, she'd get away and they wouldn't be able to get her back. These students use the rat as a calming technique. They would hand the rat to each other and say, oh can I have a turn with Mercy? They asked me whether I wanted to, I respectfully declined. But the idea is, that these teachers use every experience they can as an opportunity to teach the content that they're talking about. And that's the flexibility that we're experiencing.
Steve Davis (22:48)
And then that, I think, is what you talk about when you say these teachers are going beyond the curriculum to forge community connections and build meaningful pathways, which sounds great. How does that get balanced with curriculum delivery requirements? Because they're still there.
Liam Frost-Camilleri (23:05)
Yeah. Look, the curriculum is still there. They are very clever at making sure that these things are very well ticked off, but realistically they find the sort of mandated curriculum or the compliance of curriculum, is an arduous task that just sort of gets done at the end.
They wrap around these students with services, with connections, with pathways, with community. And the interesting thing about it is that these students who disconnected from school, some of them haven't been there since year seven, right? Others are, you know, I have had this problem I’ve been couch surfing for the last three years and I don't have a home to go to, and all these sorts of things. They have pathways now to industry education so anything that ran an apprentice or anything like that. They map this stuff.
So you have these teachers who now are turning around and saying okay out of the twenty people we had last year, twelve of them have gone to industry, three of them have jobs and the rest are going to higher education through enabling programs. And we can actually show that this is what's happening with this with this data. It's amazing stuff.
Steve Davis (24:12)
It is you can probably see my jaw is on the ground. It just restores your faith in humankind.
Liam Frost-Camilleri (24:19)
Oh, it does. But at the same time, look, the thing is, it's not easy. And in the research, they talk about quote, the right stuff, the teachers who have the right stuff. And the teachers, when I spoke to them about is like, what do you mean that you are emotionally available? What do you mean about this? They say, oh, I have to be the centre of the room. I have to be the, the place that they can come back to when things go wrong and they know that I'm not going to judge them. I'm not going to tell them that they're horrible. I'm not going to tell them I'm disappointed in them. I'm going to say, oh, that's okay, look, something happened, but I'm sure we can make it work. Let's work together on this. They become, even when they actually are disappointed and they think, geez, you know, the student, can see he's going to get this wrong. They will wait, they will be patient and they will be there when the student needs them.
Steve Davis (25:14)
Many of our listeners, well probably all of them, are really focused on VET. So let's just shift gears slightly. What are the key lessons that VET institutions could take from your research to better support learners from diverse backgrounds who might have struggled in traditional education settings themselves?
Liam Frost-Camilleri (25:33)
With the massification of education, we have more diversity than we've ever had before. The flavour of the year seems to be neurodiversity. That is a big thing that people are talking about. With more people being diagnosed now, it's more in our tongues. And I do research in neurodiversity as well, and we talk lot about it. And being neurodiverse myself, there's no difference between research and me-search, right? They tend to be quite similar. But I think access is key. And what I mean by access, I don't mean make sure it's explained well. What I mean is have various entry points into what you're doing.
Now, some students who are neurodiverse, they love to read. So you have it written down. Others like to discuss. They need to have that opportunity to just sit and discuss. Others need things like diagrams. They need something.
Now, I do not want this and any of the listeners out there to get this confused with the idea of learning styles. Learning styles has been completely debunked. And I do have an article out there under my name that says why it doesn't work. It's not a true thing. However, multiple access points into the same curriculum in different ways will give learners the opportunity to say, oh, I can cross reference this thing that I have to do on the lathe, which with the way that I actually like to learn, which is to discuss these bits and pieces. So let's discuss it, and then once we have, so when I do this, do I do that? Yes, thank you. Now I'm going to go off to the lathe, I'm going to actually put it into practice. So it isn't about this is the only way you can ever learn. It's about how can I access the content in a variety of different ways that I know is going to be comfortable for me. So that's the first piece of advice I would give for the diversity.
The next is going to be you need those wraparound services. So if your institution doesn't have things like access to therapy, EAP, these sorts of things, they need them. Right. There is such a comorbidity for anyone with ADHD or autism around anxiety, depression, these sorts of things. It's in the data. It is very clearly there. If we're going to be serious about ensuring that these people can get the support that they need, then we need to actually provide it.
So there's that big part, but there's also practical things. You know, fluorescent lighting’s terrible. Lots of noise is not very good for anyone who's autistic. But at the same time, if you've met one person who's autistic, you've met one person who's autistic. They're not the same. And speak to them about their experience. The best sentence that an autistic person can hear when they say to you, I'm autistic, so that can impact my learning, is how does that present for you? And let them tell you. Well, it means that sometimes I get a lot of anxiety around deadlines and things like that, or sometimes I'll read a paragraph and have to read it three or four times and I really struggle. Already you've got some insight into how you can help the student.
So do the broad brush strokes where you are making sure the content is accessible in different ways. You make sure the environment is working as best it can. I know that that's not always, you know, if you turn to your boss and say, we need to change these light globes, and they say, we have no money, that's hard. But if you can, those things help, but then get down to that individual nitty gritty space where you're saying, how does this present for you? And if they say, I don't know, you can say, well, let's figure it out together.
Steve Davis (29:08)
Before I come to our final question, I do need to go back. Learning styles. And you talked about different entry points. Is that learning styles by another name, Liam? Just, just for those of us who are, who haven't quite relinquished that yet.
Liam Frost-Camilleri (29:28)
Look, you're going to have a preference as to the way you like to interact with the world. And I think the difference is for anyone who's neurodivergent, that preference tends to be quite strong. And this is why you have difficulty with connection with people and being social and things like that. I like to read books because my friends in my books don't argue with me. Right. So it's kind of like that. This is true where you could say that somebody prefers to work with their hands or somebody prefers to listen to books rather than read them. Yeah, 100% true, but that's not a learning style. That's just a preference. Okay. The problem with learning styles, the issue that we have with it is that it turned into let's completely change the curriculum and make a classroom just for the people who like to auditory learn, and just for the kinaesthetic learners.
And this is a big problem because in the real world we have to engage with all of them. You have to be physical. You have to read. You have to write. You have to do the lot. It just shows you a preference, not the only space. So that's why I become really anti-learning styles because it very much perverted the way we were seeing different preferences around access of information.
Steve Davis (30:45)
Okay. You can put down on your little book that you've converted another person.
Liam Frost-Camilleri (30:49)
Oh, I'm so glad.
Steve Davis (30:52)
In closing and from a policy perspective, I'm curious. What changes would you recommend to better support teachers in fostering student wellbeing within VET environments?
Liam Frost-Camilleri (31:05)
This is huge, Steve. This is really difficult. So there's a few things in there that automatically come to mind that I would recommend. And the first would have to be a very clear funding stream for these sorts of activities.
I think a lot of people who are working in VET, I mean, they are dealing with a wide variety of diversity where these students are concerned. And if they're dealing with a lot of anxiety or they're dealing with a lot of issues around depression and things like that, we need to fund that properly. And we need to stop thinking about schools as marketing opportunities or corporate structures. Schools, including TAFEs, including VET, including higher education, they are community organisations and education is a right. It's not a commodity.
Now, if we are going to be serious about them being community organisations, the role of community organisations is to provide a wraparound service that supports the learner. And that includes access to therapy, discussions, these sorts of things in groups. So that's the first thing I would say the funding needs to change.
The second thing I would say that I think is really huge. Policy needs to reflect what we know is best practice. Now, policy at the moment at a federated level, at the top level, will talk about equity often. But often that equity only equals access. They say if you have access to it, then therefore that means we have equity. And that is just simply not the case.
The thing that might blow your mind around this, Steve, and I'm hoping anyone listening out here really takes this this on board. One of the teaching strategies that we know works very well for diverse learners is something called differentiation. And basically what differentiation is, is changing the curriculum up for each individual student, sometimes small groups, sometimes individuals, depending on how your group is sort of working, in a way that access their prior knowledge, in a way that allows them to sort of fulfill the curriculum in their own way. Right? So it is individualised instructions. One of the things we know works really well. Not one federal policy features the term differentiation or a clarification as to what differentiation should be. The only place it exists is in disability education. It's the only place.
Now, if you really do believe and follow the research that says differentiation makes a difference? Then that needs to be in our policies. And it needs to be clearly articulated and it needs to be something that when a teacher comes in, trainer, whatever you're going to go by, when a teacher or trainer comes in, they can grab the government document and say, this is what it means to differentiate for my diverse learners. Now, until we have a clear strategy around that, it's not going to change. So they'd be my two big things.
Steve Davis (34:12)
Liam, thank you very much for being part of Vocational Voices.
Liam Frost-Camilleri (34:16)
It's been my absolute pleasure. Thank you.
Steve Davis (34:28)
Our next guest is Dr Angus Hughes, Senior Data Analyst at NCVER. Angus's presentation, Developing a deeper understanding of foundation skills learner journeys, examined the characteristics and pathways of foundation skills learners.
Welcome, Angus.
Dr Angus Hughes (34:46)
Thank you very much.
Steve Davis (34:47)
Your analysis identified two distinct groups of foundation skills learners with different VET program enrolment patterns. Could you start by describing these groups and what the differences mean for program design?
Dr Angus Hughes (35:02)
So when we talk about foundation skills, quite often the way it's presented is kind of like a single broad cohort of learners who need to kind of develop these very foundational language, literacy, numeracy and digital skills, quite often known by the acronym LLND. What we sought to do was to understand the diversity within foundation skills learners. And so to do that, we did a form of cluster analysis to identify very distinct patterns of learners, to kind of understand a little bit of the variation within these VET learners.
We found that generally we could split them into two different types. These were the LOAT learners, so individuals who spoke a language other than English at home, and non-LOAT learners, so individuals who spoke English at home. And really, there were very noticeable differences just in terms of their demographics, for example. So we saw that typically the non-LOAT students tended to be a little bit younger, they skewed a little bit more male, predominantly born in Australia, speaking English at home obviously, more likely to be living in a smaller city or rural area, and were currently unemployed or more likely to be living with a disability. And these individuals had lower levels of educational attainment as well.
So we have a picture really of these predominantly Australian born English speakers who may not have completed as much education as perhaps they wanted to. And maybe they kind of are currently finding themselves unemployed. They're taking these foundation skills potentially to make up for some of the lost educational attainment maybe that some of their peers received.
Contrast those with the low learners. So these were individuals who are more likely to be born overseas. They do speak a language of English at home. They skewed a little bit more female, a little bit older and more likely to be living in major cities. More often than not, they were not currently in the workforce and not living with a disability. And their educational attainment previously tended to be higher. Many of these people had finished at least a year 12 and even attained up to a bachelor's degree or higher.
What we feel is these are people who are quite often migrating to Australia or perhaps they, you know, speaking a language other than English at home, but they are otherwise quite well educated. They want to develop a lot more of their English skills. And so we see that turn up in the types of programs they're doing, as you mentioned. These LOTE students tend to be doing things like spoken written English, English as an additional language, preliminary spoken written English. Whereas the non-low students are doing things that are a little bit more vocationally focused.
So skills for work and vocational pathways, applied vocational study skills, a course in underpinning skills for industry qualifications. So really there's very distinct patterns of the types of foundation skills that they're doing. And the overall insight that we had was that these two different types of learners are quite distinct and just talking about foundation skills learners as one monolith is not really appropriate, there are different types of foundation skills learner.
Steve Davis (37:56)
What student and program characteristics did your research find most influential in predicting whether someone would complete or withdraw from a foundation skills programs?
Dr Angus Hughes (38:08)
One of the things I guess to kind of put in context here is that foundation skills programs have a noticeably lower completion rate compared to all other VET programs. So on average, just over one in five students will finish a foundation skills program they enrol with, when compared to around half or potentially more of students finishing any other type of VET program.
There is a policy problem here and as much as if we look at program completions and completion rates as something that we're interested in, foundation skills programs have very low completion rates. So it was of interest to us to understand why and what particular success factors can we identify.
By far the most important factor in predicting whether we would find a successful completion of a foundation skills program was whether they were taking the studies full time. This is consistent with previous research, but it was just by far and away the most important thing. But the interesting thing to note here is that most foundation skills enrolments are taken part time. So you're much more likely to complete if you're taking it full time.
But with that being said, the majority of students are not taking these programs full time. They're doing them part time upwards of basically 75% for LOTE and 85% for non-LOTE students are taking these programs part-time.
We also found that the timing of when you're taking your foundation skills program really matters. So students undertaking a separate VET program simultaneously with their foundation skills, that is to say they were kind of having overlapping concurrent VET and foundation skills program enrolments, were less likely to complete their foundation skills program. So in other words, if you're focusing exclusively on your foundation skills, you're more likely to be completing. If you're doing something else on the side, you're less likely to be completing your foundation skills.
And these patterns of foundation skill study and completion really potentially point to the intention of the students taking their studies. It's very possible that these individuals who enrol in a foundation skills program after having enrolled in another VET program are really doing so just to support their VET program, rather than aiming to complete a foundation skills qualification in and of itself. This may explain why the completions are so low. They're kind of taking this as a means to an end rather than wanting to kind of seek a piece of parchment that says, I completed a Cert II in skills for work and study.
Steve Davis (40:21)
That is fascinating because we would typically be taking these because it's a means to an end, but you're suggesting, I think, finding some way to make it an end within itself would help achieve greater completion rates.
Dr Angus Hughes (40:36)
There's different ways to deliver foundation skills. Some of these are actually developed already within different VET programs. And you see different models of this throughout Australia. But essentially, there are a suite of different foundation skills programs that yield qualifications in and of themselves. And the outcomes of these qualifications are really noticeably lower within the VET sector. When you look at what the students are doing alongside it, it looks as though potentially the reason that they're in these distinct, discrete standalone qualifications is because they're potentially doing it to support a separate VET program, be it something in hairstyling, plumbing, whatever it may be.
So the standalone programs in and of themselves might not be kind of the outcome that we're really especially interested in. One of the things that we did find was completion of just individual units, all the ones that you enrol in within the program, regardless of whether you finish the program, did seem to yield some better outcomes for your concurrent VET enrolment.
So what I'm suggesting really is that there's different ways that you could approach delivering foundation skills. One of them is through these kind of standalone qualification type models. But the outcomes of these standalone qualifications aren't necessarily the be all and end all. And you may see a certain level of students who are just kind of taking it because they want some help in their study. They want some help to kind of learn how to learn, basically, through language, through literacy, through digital skills, whatever it may be.
Steve Davis (42:03)
This is what I love about being in the NCVER bubble. You continually tell me to rip my eyes away from the headline and look at the nuance. So I'm chastened. Thank you.
Angus, your student outcome survey analysis revealed some interesting findings about personal and job-related benefits. How do programs with foundation skills support compared to similar programs without that support?
Dr Angus Hughes (42:30)
So this was a nice piece of analysis that we did. Having identified that a lot of students are taking VET programs alongside their foundation skills programs, we wanted to know, well, are these VET programs kind of seeing any benefits in terms of, you've done it alongside foundation skills or you've not done it alongside foundation skills. Hopefully that foundation skills activity, the learning delivered through the foundation skills program, regardless of whether you completed it, will deliver some kind of benefit to you.
So what we did was we paired off similar types of students in similar types of programs who did or didn't have these concurrent foundation skills studies. Basically, people who were kind of receiving the foundation skills support versus people who were not receiving the foundation skills support. And looking at the student outcome survey data, what we found was that non-LOTE learners on average were more likely to complete their VET program by 1.8 percentage points when the VET program was delivered alongside foundation skills. And LOTE learners also benefited, albeit to a bit of a lesser degree by one percentage point, they're more likely to complete their VET program.
This is regardless of whether they successfully completed the Foundation Skills program. Taking our eyes away from that kind of headline, what is the outcome for the program itself, we essentially found that doing Foundation Skills alongside your VET studies can deliver benefits to the VET studies that you're enrolled in.
We wanted to go a little bit deeper still, so we looked at the rates of completion of all these subjects within a particular Foundation Skills program. And there was a really nice effect where basically the students who successfully passed all of their concurrent Foundation Skills subjects were more likely to complete their VET program, than those who did not pass at least one of their Foundation Skills subjects. It was a lot more noticeable in the non-LOTE students, in fact, which is a nice reason to separate these two different groups. But what we can kind of see here is that the more subjects that you're successfully completing, the more likely you're going to be completing the VET program that you're doing alongside.
Now, in terms of employment outcomes, we found a similar effect, and it was actually perhaps even more kind of a headline result. We found that amongst both the non-LOTE and LOTE cluster, there were benefits in terms of attaining a job. So it was a 4.8 percentage point increase for the non-load cluster of attaining a job when you're taking your VET studies alongside of foundation skills, and a 5.6 percentage point increase for the LOTE cluster. What we can see here is there are real job-related benefits of taking foundation skills alongside of a VET program, regardless of whether that foundation skills program is completed or not.
Steve Davis (45:09)
Are those numbers significant, do you think, that 4.8 percentage points and 5.6, would you consider that as a significant boost?
Dr Angus Hughes (45:17)
It is a significant boost. This was an analysis we did, controlling, statistically controlling for a range of different factors. Like I said, we tried to take a matching approach. We look through a massive, massive data set to find instances of people who were as close as possible, almost trying to have like a treatment and control like you would kind of see in a medical study, for example.
Obviously, you can't withhold foundation skills support for people who really need it. It's not an ethical thing to do. But there are people who will voluntarily say, I don't want to take foundation skills. I just want to do my VET program. And so when you try to pair off these individuals and look at their kind of counterfactual outcomes, what if they didn't take these foundation skills, what if they didn't receive the support. This is a statistically significant result, but it also is kind of a meaningfully important result because, you know, increasing your probability of attaining a job by five percentage points for having done a little bit of foundation skills alongside is a pretty good outcome overall for the workforce, I would say.
Steve Davis (46:15)
Yep, fair point. In closing, for policymakers and practitioners who are designing foundation skills programs, what are the key insights from your data analysis that should guide their decisions?
Dr Angus Hughes (46:28)
I'll start with the policymakers. A couple of things kind of came out throughout the course of this project. How we evaluate foundation skills may need some different types of thinking aside from this program completion focus. Within the VET sector, we're always so focused on completion rates and particularly program completion rates.
The program delivery foundation skills is a good model for some learners, but some learners, like we say, are potentially taking these programs just as a means to an end. Perhaps it's just a way of them kind of getting the skills that they need and getting out without actually needing to get that parchment. So potentially going down to the subject level to say, well, how many subjects has this individual taken? How many have they successfully completed? Here's a better way of kind of quantifying what are the benefits from these foundation skills programs rather than just saying, well, these programs have low completions and therefore, you know, that's a worse outcome than if they had better completions potentially.
There's also the aspect of the cluster analysis segmenting into LOTE and non-LOTE. So if we were to evaluate outcomes of foundation skill studies, we really do want to make sure that we're talking about populations that go together rather than just a hodgepodge of different types of people with very different aims and different goals.
Like I mentioned at the start, this non-LOTE group and the LOTE group are very distinct in the types of programs that they're doing, and they're very distinct in terms of their demographic profiles. Their outcomes are different, their VET journeys are quite different. I didn't mention this, the LOAT students quite often will start with foundation skills and then fewer of them will progress to VET, but they're quite often starting with foundation skills. Whereas the non-LOAT are coming to the VET sector and only then subsequently going into foundation skills potentially due to identified need. Maybe they're kind of struggling a little bit in a program that they're taking. These are two very distinct types of learner. And for policymakers to kind of ignore the distinction would be a big mistake in my opinion.
In terms of practitioners, one of the key things that we found was this subject level foundation skills activity. So we really did find that kind of the more foundation skills subjects that you're completing, irrespective of whether you finish the whole kind of Cert II or whatever it may be, the more likely that you'll be completing your VET program alongside.
But the flip side to that coin is failing to complete one or more foundation skill subjects was a real warning that the VET program that was being done alongside is also unlikely to be completed. Like I said, this effect was quite stark for the non-LOTE group, but it applied as well to the LOTE group. Essentially, if you see a student who is failing to complete a foundation skill subject, this is a real warning sign that potentially the rest of the VET studies is going to be impacted as well. This is pretty low level kind of training. It's really kind of the foundations of learning to learn type skills. And if you see a student who's not successfully kind of completing one of these subjects, it's probably a good opportunity to intervene and say, what can we do to help them? Because if this isn't being completed, then something else potentially a little bit more kind of complex or applied is unlikely to be completed as well.
Steve Davis (49:32)
Angus, thank you very much for being part of Vocational Voices.
Dr Angus Hughes (49:36)
A pleasure.
Steve Davis (49:46)
We're joined now by researchers from NCVER, Upekha Andrahannadi and Dr Tabatha Griffin. Their presentation, Effective student support: enabling the learner journey, investigated how registered training organisations, or RTOs, can better support students for successful training completion.
Upekha and Tabatha, welcome to Vocational Voices.
Dr Tabatha Griffin (50:12)
Thank you very much, Steve.
Steve Davis (50:13)
Upekha, I'll start with you. Your research identified six interrelated elements of effective student support. I wonder if you could outline these elements and how they work together to create a supportive learning environment.
Dr Upekha Andrahannadi (50:27)
Thank you, Steve. We identified six interrelated elements based on automatic analysis of data from both staff and students and as you said, these elements are all intertwined and reflected a mix of strategies, processes and behaviours. And one was a whole-of-institution approach where our participants spoke about their collaborative, innovative and student-centric cultures and also ensuring that staff have the necessary skills, manageable workloads and access to well-being support so that they can help their learners.
Another key characteristic is early engagement with students and relevant stakeholders, such as parents of the school based trainees, the employers and other external service providers. And another key element was high quality training delivered by caring experts. And also there was this continuity of support across the learner journey from pre-enrolment, commencing learners, ongoing study and through to completion. And another element was providing holistic and individualized support where they stressed the importance of other well-being supports beyond LLND support, such as counselling, financial and other living supports, peer support, and also culturally inclusive and safe learning environments.
And also they spoke about strong relationship building. The importance of trainer-learner relationships and trainer and support staff relationships and also relationships with other stakeholders. So those were the intertwined key elements of effective student support we identified.
Steve Davis (52:22)
I love hearing the trainer-learner relationship being there because growing up just in school before any of this, some of those relationships are the most life-changing and deepening relationships you can have and I'm really heartened that it still remains part of the VET sector, which is great. And the other word you used in there was care. And I want to hone in on this because personally, I think the world has, is losing some of that ability to make sure there's time and space and wherewithal for care in our daily lives, let alone just within VET.
So this key insight from your research is that participating RTOs viewed students support through, I quote, genuine care for student success rather than obligation or compliance. Upekha, can I stay with you? This mindset, how does that translate into different practices in the real world?
Dr Upekha Andrahannadi (53:15)
A key element from our study was that RTOC students support as coming from a genuine care for student success and not just as something they have to do to meet compliance requirements. So this caring approach really came through in these stories shared by both staff and students.
When RTOs have trainers and support staff who genuinely care about their learners, they say that it completely transforms the student experience. In fact, in many of our case study RTOs, a lot of the staff have been there for years and they know their students well, they know sort of the warning signs, and they're quick and offer help before something feels like before someone feels overwhelmed or ready to give up.
So one senior trainer told us that if you can have this combination in an RTO where you have trainers who care, and a business that isn't just about numbers, then that's where you're going to get quality outcomes for individuals. These RTOs had like a real shared passion for student success. Also we could see how it leads to higher completion rates. As one trainer said, that they tell their students at the very beginning, if the students are genuinely motivated to finish their qualification, they'll do everything in their power to help them get there. So even if that means working through illness or reaching out to students that they are worried about.
It was clear from our data that the students also strongly felt this care element, they often had stories about their trainers going above and beyond. And also students mentioned how much it means to have trainers who are not only engaging, but genuinely lovely and empathetic people. And when that care and commitment line up with a motivated student, the results are always very positive.
Steve Davis (55:22)
At the risk of derailing us outside of your research, I am very curious to know. This care, was it intrinsic within, the trainers, the teachers, et cetera, or was it a, an outpouring of a culture within an RTO or something in between? Do we know, or is, have I, have I let us down the garden path?
Dr Upekha Andrahannadi (55:44)
It was a bit of both. The trainers really had the passion and this genuine care for their students. And also it wasn't just the trainers. It was the trainers, support staff, and also the leadership. So it wasn't just the trainers, it was the whole culture of the RTOs we looked at. And that genuinely learner-centric culture came through every part of the organisation.
Steve Davis (56:10)
Great. Tabatha, what common barriers did you find that RTOs and students face when they're delivering and accessing student support? And how did your case studies demonstrate maybe some successful approaches to overcoming these barriers?
Dr Tabatha Griffin (56:26)
We found the challenges that we identified both in offering and accessing support could be loosely categorised into three sort of different categories, I suppose, RTO based challenges, student-based challenges and external challenges.
So RTO based challenges, they were things like trainers lacking expertise in providing specialised support, potentially due to different pathways that they've taken into being trainers and the training that they've had there. This raised questions also around the extent and type of support that trainers themselves should be providing. So some ways that the case study RTOs were mitigating this were through strategies such as providing PD for the staff focused on being able to provide inclusive teaching practices and supports for students, but also implementing team teaching and support models so that teachers were not doing this type of work alone.
There were also issues such as staffing and time constraints, both because of staff shortages, but also because trainers can be time poor. So managing those types of things and making sure that the resources are available was really important.
Funding and resource constraints, of course, was another challenge that was highlighted. These types of issues did vary depending on the RTO type, their size, whether they were publicly funded or privately funded, and their ability to funnel funding and resources where they needed, where they needed it.
The second type of barrier were the student-based barriers. And these often arise from individual circumstances and they can impact a learner's ability or willingness to access and benefit from student support services. So things like behavioural barriers were identified and this is where students might hesitate to seek help, they might be fearful of being discriminated against, or might not have the confidence or they might be embarrassed about saying they need help.
And cultural factors can also influence help seeking behaviour. And so it was important for the RTOs to create a safe environment where students felt that they could put their hand up for the supports that they needed.
The second student-based challenge that we identified was around learner capability and mindset. And by capability, we mean examples like students not being able to access support online, for example, due to perhaps some digital literacy limitations. This demonstrated the importance of offering support in multiple ways. And when we talk about mindset, this was really giving some ownership to the students about their own training experience and making sure that they had some agency in themselves to be able to, you know, pursue the supports that they need.
The third category was a much trickier one for RTOs to mitigate. This was the external challenges, and these were things like unsupportive work environments. So that captures issues like learners not being able to, not being given the time required to undertake their training, but perhaps they also have difficulties in accessing the available support services if they're working long hours.
To try and alleviate some of these issues, the RTO has reported investing resources into building strong relationships with employers with the aim of ensuring that the roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders are understood. But of course, this is only relevant if the training is workplace related. So if it's not, it's a much more difficult challenge to manage.
Steve Davis (1:00:49)
Upekha, there was quite a diversity of RTOs in your study. How can these common elements of effective student support be adapted for different contexts and different provider types?
Dr Upekha Andrahannadi (1:01:02)
The key elements as I mentioned, they're all intertwined. But how the RTOs practiced these elements varied based on their demographics. That suggests the type of the RTO, where they're located, their student cohorts and the resources available.
For example, if we look at the structures of support or taking a collective approach where providing support is everyone's responsibility. Staff mentioned that they share information across the RTOs and had strong communication partners to ensure that all students are looked after. So that was a common facet. And different types had different ways of doing this. So one RTO who was an industrial association mentioned that they have four layers of safety nets where they have educators as the first point of contact, then course managers who step in early and coordinate interventions, and then they had student support offices and external support centres.
Another RTO told us that they've set up mini teams, each made up of two trainers and a student support advisor, and each mini team sticks with the same group of students from enrolment to completion. So that's one example and if we talk about the structures of student support, these structures look different across our case study RTOs as they were tailored to their specific learner cohorts and available resources as I mentioned before.
All these structures facilitated both training and wellbeing support. For example, a public training provider had dedicated student support staff and centres across several campuses offering both in-person support and phone and online support, and another RTO provided like a private RTO provided language literacy and numeracy support and counselling in-house, but referred students to external services for more specialised needs. But the important fact here is that regardless of the model one thing that stood out was clear communication about the available support starting even before students enrolled and continuing all the way through their learner journey.
Steve Davis (1:03:28)
So what I get from that is that yes, I mean communication of that support services is important. If you don't know it's there, you're not going to be able to access it. But also I'm fascinated by the bespoke way in which different RTOs have applied these different elements to suit their needs, which is very heartening.
And I want to just take that one step further now, because for VET practitioners wanting to implement a whole of institution approach to student support, is there any practical advice you have that you could offer that's based on your research?
Dr Upekha Andrahannadi (1:04:03)
The whole of institution approach was one of the strongest things to come through in our analysis.
And given the diversity and complexity across the sector, both staff and students highlighted that the need for student success to be a shared and institution-wide priority and not just the job of a team or a specific role. From the case studies, we identified four interconnected facets of this approach. I mentioned these briefly before, like RTO culture, structures of support and collective approaches and of course supporting staff to support learners.
As I mentioned before, how these examples played out varied depending on the demographics of these RTOs. Also when asked about success factors that help the students complete their training, students also told us that knowing that they have the support is a key success factor. So with this whole of institution approach, RTOs are able to communicate where the support needs are and how the students can find support, that is a critical factor.
Dr Tabatha Griffin (1:05:20)
It was a common theme too that it really does come from the top of the organisation. It's not going to work if you're just trying to work from the bottom up to get that whole of institution approach. That really needs to be coming down from the top, that culture is set from the top of the organisation.
If it's seen as a priority right from the top of the organisation, then that can filter through and it actually enables all of those other staff to be able to work more effectively in that space.
Steve Davis (1:05:57)
Who would have thought that social beings could learn from modelling?
Dr Tabatha Griffin (1:06:02)
True.
Steve Davis (1:06:04)
Look Upekha and Tabatha, thank you very much for taking us through that and for being part of Vocational Voices.
Dr Tabatha Griffin (1:06:12)
Thanks very much, Steve. Our pleasure.
Steve Davis (01:06:23)
Our final guest for this episode is Bridget Wibrow, Senior Research Officer at NCVER. Bridget's presentation, Strengthening Pathways into VET and Beyond for a Diverse Range of Learners, explored the drivers of student choice in VET, particularly focusing on the role of student support services.
Bridget, welcome to Vocational Voices.
Bridget Wibrow (1:06:47)
Thanks, Steve.
Steve Davis (1:06:48)
Your discrete choice experiment examined how students weigh student support services against factors like cost, delivery mode and travel time when choosing providers. What patterns emerged from this research?
Bridget Wibrow (1:07:03)
We looked at three different student support services. So that was health and welfare support, career counselling and job search support, as well as tutoring and study skills support. So when we looked at how these supports compared with things like the cost of a course, the delivery mode and travel time, we found that students showed that the most important factor to them out of those six things was the course cost, followed by the travel time and the delivery mode. And then the three support services took up less of that importance.
But at the same time, between the three of them, the student support services made up about 26% of the total importance out of those six factors. So you could say like, well, it might not have been the main driver. It certainly played a role in where the student would pick an RTO.
Steve Davis (1:08:02)
Did cost being the first one surprise you?
Bridget Wibrow (1:08:04)
Not really. Cause I would imagine, you know, for a lot of people, cost is a factor and with our drivers that we were looking at everything had different levels under it. So for course costs, there was four different options starting at something around $300 all the way up to $5,000. And if you look at, you know, what had the biggest preference of people, it was definitely that lower cost element.
Steve Davis (1:08:32)
Absolutely. How does the perceived importance of student support services vary based on the level of support offered and also the students' background? Particularly those with learning-related disabilities or who are unemployed?
Bridget Wibrow (1:08:47)
We definitely looked at, talked about the student support services on three different levels that we included in the experiment. So basically, they were no support was offered at all, group sessions, or individualised support. And these are all based off of support services we've seen as options on RTO websites. So they were kind of realistic choices.
So what we found was that there was definitely, people definitely did not like the no support option. So there was a greater preference for some sort of support and there wasn't too much difference between whether it was individual support or group sessions. So as long as there was some sort of support, that was preferred by learners.
And I think what you mentioned when it came to the student cohort, like the really interesting thing for me is that we looked at quite a few different cohorts. So we looked at like First Nations students, whether people living in metropolitan areas or regional areas, as well as some other factors. And what I found really interesting where there was kind of some student cohorts where I thought they may have actually wanted some sort of extra support. So you mentioned those of a learning related disability. So what we found is that they were no more likely than those without a learning related disability to choose, you know, tutoring and study skills support or any other support options.
Steve Davis (1:10:15)
That surprises me as well.
Bridget Wibrow (1:10:18)
Yeah. So I didn't know whether it was just my own assumption coming into it. And I don't know, maybe they get other supports elsewhere. But I thought that might have been a factor. And the other one was also those that are unemployed, and to be in the unemployed category when you're at labour force status, you actually need to be looking for work to be counted as unemployed. So these are people that are actually looking for jobs and compared to the other learners, they were not any more likely to choose wanting the career counselling or job search support option. Yeah, I found that one surprising too.
Steve Davis (1:10:58)
That does raise some questions which I will come to you about, the communication. But your research looked at how easily prospective students can actually find information about student supports on RTO websites. What did you discover and what are the implications?
Bridget Wibrow (1:11:14)
So what we did was we looked at a random stratified sample of 100 RTO websites, as well as their MySchools pages and social media pages. We were people looking for students information, student support services.
And what we found was quite varied in the ease that you could find the information. So a lot of the larger RTOs and also public RTOs would have student support services information in an easy to find location on their website, like it might have been on a separate tab on the homepage. Whereas for some of the other RTOs, it was kind of hidden on their websites.
We found it, like, maybe it might have been in a student handbook that you had to download. Whereas I guess, like, if you're a potential student, you're not familiar with the VET sector, you're having to look at different RTOs, trying to find information. And we know from the discrete choice experiment that, you know, student support services do play a role in which RTO you may pick. If you can't find that information, then maybe you might choose not to enrol with that RTO.
And there was also quite, it wasn't just about the ease of information, was also the amount of information provided. So someone had just listed a couple of, a few dot points on what they provided, whereas others had quite detailed information on what the services were and how you would actually go about accessing them as well.
Steve Davis (1:12:42)
I might derail us here, but I have to ask you. You mentioned on some websites it appeared to be hidden actively or passively. Is it just accidentally not as prominent? Do you have any intuitions about that?
Bridget Wibrow (1:12:55)
I'm not sure I can really answer that, but I will say there is actually through ASQA and the state and territory governments, there's actually a mandatory requirement for RTOs to provide certain support services. Students don't know this either. I think like it's one of those things is that it's not that it's not available, and it may not even be an issue like of it being, like the quality may still be good. It's just the information is not easy for these students to find.
Steve Davis (1:13:28)
Moving beyond enrolment decisions, how can VET providers better communicate and facilitate access to student support services throughout the entire learner journey?
Bridget Wibrow (1:13:40)
This research was really focused on that point of enrolment. So at that stage, just being able to find the information on the website when you're deciding who to enrol with. Like that's obviously one of the key things to help them, you know, make a better decision.
But like also just ensuring the students are aware of what's available, how to access it. If you don't tell them upfront, they're not going to know.
Steve Davis (1:14:09)
What advice would you give to policymakers and also RTOs about leveraging the importance of student support services so that they can attract and retain diverse learners in VET.
Bridget Wibrow (1:14:21)
I think part of it is just making sure, as I said before, you've got it clear. One of the things for me is that we looked at the MySkills pages and the MySkills website is actually meant to be a tool for potential students to be able to compare the RTOs offering the course that they want to do.
And looking at the RTO pages on the MySkills website, they really didn't have any information at all. Like you might have just said that they have flexible learning options. And so I would say, taking ownership of the page, adding more information to it is one way that RTOs can, you know, help students to make that decision and help them to see what's out there. And then maybe that could be the thing that sways them to go with that particular RTO.
Steve Davis (1:15:15)
I'm getting the sense as an outsider that some RTOs are missing the value in attracting learners by not making this so easily understood.
Bridget Wibrow (1:15:27)
I would say that it is something that, you know, potentially if you don't have the information easily to find at all, they may not want to choose that RTO because, as I said, these different support services do, you know, play a role in what RTO they will choose.
But the other thing I was going to mention is that just making sure, so some training organisations, they will have some information on their website but it only be for particular cohorts of students. Which is not a bad thing, like you were talking about, it might be for people with a disability, First Nations students, people from a non-English speaking background. So we clearly state what the supports are for those people, but not the general student populations. I think just making sure information is available for all the different types of learners.
Steve Davis (1:16:20)
Bridget, thank you very much for that and thanks also for being part of Vocational Voices.
Bridget Wibrow (1:16:25)
Thank you.
Steve Davis (01:16:35)
That brings us to the end of our two-part special, Best of ‘No Frills’ 2025: diverse voices in VET. I want to extend a huge thank you to all our guests for sharing their invaluable insights and research. For more information, papers and presentations from ‘No Frills’ 2025, please visit the NCVER website, ncver.edu.au. Thanks for tuning in to Vocational Voices. We hope these discussions have provided valuable insights for everyone in the VET sector from practitioners and government ministers to employers and students.
Vocational Voices is produced by NCVER on behalf of the Australian Government and State and Territory Governments with funding provided through the Australian Government Department of Employment and Workplace Relations.
For further information, please visit ncver.edu.edu.au.