Exploring locality: The impact of context on Indigenous vocational education and training aspirations and outcomes

• More realistic employment opportunities exist for Indigenous learners who complete their vocational education and training (VET) programs in urban areas, than those in regional and remote areas.
  
  
• Compared to regional and remote learners, urban learners encounter less racist attitudes toward their entry into employment or training, are able to access a wider variety of Indigenous employment and training programs, and participate in programs more closely related to work available to them.
  
  
• Indigenous learners in regional areas often compete with each other and a large pool of unemployed people for specific Indigenous employment opportunities.
  
  
• Employment opportunities for Indigenous learners in remote settings are severely limited. They are largely unaware of opportunities for expanding their learning, or for employment, and so have few aspirations for further education or to seek work. Hence, VET needs to relate more concretely to the conditions and opportunities presented by remote localities.
  
  
• The Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) appears to be the only avenue for expansion in employment opportunities for remote learners.
  
  
• Considerations such as family and community responsibilities, and connection to the land prevent regional and remote learners from relocating to urban areas in order to greater access employment opportunities.
  
  
• Many regional Indigenous learners are committed to further training, which may be related to the lack of immediate employment opportunities and the alternative to unemployment offered by technical and further education (TAFE) institutes.
  
  
• The majority of both regional and urban Indigenous learners are apprehensive about moving into mainstream courses due to a lack of confidence in their potential for success.
  
  
• The availability of desired courses, teaching staff and community attitudes to vocational education and training in the various locations are all issues impacting on successful outcomes for further training and employment.
  
  
• Further investigation is needed into how structures linking Indigenous training to work opportunities can be established, in particular how training can be more closely connected to the Community Development Employment Program.
  
  
• Successful outcomes of Indigenous involvement in vocational education and training are not always related to further education or employment. Therefore, Indigenous learning approaches should acknowledge the importance of outcomes such as increased confidence, improved literacy, and the ability to promote and facilitate family and community knowledge and wellbeing.

Introduction

This study explores the extent to which differing contextual settings in South Australia-urban, regional and remote-impact upon the outcomes of Indigenous learners who have undertaken vocational education and training (VET). In this project the outcomes considered were those which concerned subsequent employment and/or further education.

Indigenous learners, training facilitators and other personnel involved in VET provision in each of the localities selected were invited to contribute to the project. The study took a qualitative research approach, beginning with a review of literature on Indigenous participation in VET courses nationally and within South Australia, the training aspirations and outcomes for Indigenous learners, and the factors determining and issues arising from location.

Interviews were then conducted in a small number of learning organisations in the three differing contextual settings across South Australia. These three settings were:

• Remote: Anangu-Pitjantjatjara Lands-Amata and Indulkana communities
• Regional: Murray Bridge campus of the Onkaparinga Institute of TAFE, and Berri and Loxton campuses of the Murray Institute of TAFE
• Urban: Adelaide Institute of TAFE, Tauondi College, the Wiltja Program at Woodville High School and Maxima Training, a private registered training organisation.

Research questions

The research undertaken for this project focused on four key questions:

• What differing issues and factors specific to the settings do these learners encounter that impact upon employment opportunities during or following VET courses?
• To what extent do the learners intend to continue their engagement in learning?
• What aspirations do these learners have with regards to employment or further study following their VET courses?
• What types of outcomes can be achieved and how different are they for Indigenous VET learners across the different settings?

Locality counts

In the urban localities, learners seem to encounter less entrenched racist attitudes towards their entry into employment or training than do their regionally located counterparts. Furthermore, learners in the urban areas are able to access a wider variety of Indigenous employment and training programs than those available to either regional or remote learners, and the programs offered to urban Indigenous learners generally relate more closely to available work. Hence such programs provide more realistic employment opportunities.

With very few programs focusing on specific Indigenous employment opportunities, regional learners must compete with each other and a large pool of unemployed people within the wider community. Indigenous learners in these localities can experience some antagonism from the mainstream community, and consequently find that employment opportunities are often limited by discrimination associated with their Indigenous identity rather than with their level of training or skill.

In remote settings, employment opportunities for Indigenous learners are severely limited by an almost complete lack of agencies or industries offering training and employment opportunities. Currently, the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) appears to be the only avenue through which these opportunities could be expanded. However, there is also an implicit acceptance in these remote locations that most available employment is taken up by non-Indigenous people, many of whom travel from other areas to take up this employment.

In both regional and remote settings, learners' opportunities to access wider employment placements have to be considered in relation to the social and cultural issues arising from their attachment to land and community. Relocation to an urban locality where more employment may be available is not simply a matter of distance, but includes considerations such as family ties, community responsibilities and cultural connection to land. When considering relocation, Indigenous learners also take into account the safety of their known community, the prospects of finding economical accommodation, concerns about suitable schooling for their children and acceptance of them by the new community they might plan to enter. A shortage of public transport in regional areas also impacts significantly on learners wanting to follow up employment opportunities that might arise within travelling distance of their homes.

Aspirations for further training and employment

The extent to which Indigenous learners intend to continue an engagement with VET varies from locality to locality. In the remote localities, Aboriginal learners were found to be largely unaware of opportunities for expanding their learning, or for employment, and so have few aspirations to continue to learn or to seek work. Because there is an almost total lack of work opportunities beyond possible participation in the Community Development Employment Program, these learners do not expect that work will be available. Many of the learners in these remote locations are highly mobile and move from school to school, often with long periods of non-attendance at school. However, VET programs do not always have continuity across institutions, which makes ongoing participation in vocational education and training difficult. Moreover, uncertainty over the way in which VET programs operate in remote localities appears to have been a factor in limiting ongoing aspirations for further or continued learning.

Regional Aboriginal learners, on the other hand, were found to be more committed to further training. However, in the regional case study sites this finding was related to the lack of immediate employment opportunities and to the relative security and continuity of programs offered by Aboriginal education departments in regional technical and further education (TAFE) institutes which provide a valid alternative to unemployment. More women than men access training, but do not necessarily aspire to being employed. Rather, they use the enhanced access to each other and the TAFE facilities as a means for resolving social, health and welfare issues in their own communities.

As well as aspiring to higher levels of training following completion of current courses, urban Indigenous learners have greater aspirations for employment than those from other regions. This was found to result from there being more opportunities, more contact with successful role models and a wider access to training and apprenticeships than elsewhere. In urban areas learners can gain entry to employment opportunities without moving away from their homes, and generally have access to public transport. Given these advantages, they more readily aspire to enter the world of work and further training than do remote and regional learners. At the same time, the majority of both regional and urban Indigenous learners are apprehensive about the prospect of moving into mainstream courses due in part to a lack of confidence in their potential for success.

The types of outcomes achieved

In relation to learning outcomes, all participants across the localities are able to undertake and complete VET courses in one form or another. The availability of desired courses, teaching staff and community attitudes to VET learning in the various locations are all issues which have an impact upon successful outcomes for further training and employment. However, the critical finding here is that successful outcomes other than those related to further education or employment can emerge from Indigenous involvement in VET studies.

In both the regional and urban localities, Indigenous participation in VET courses gives learners increased confidence in themselves as well as more control over their lives. In the case of the Introductory Vocational Education Certificate, for example, learners may not always complete the course, but from it will learn the value and importance of being able to read and write. Being literate enables individuals to make informed choices for themselves based on what they find out, not on what other people tell them. Additional and equally important outcomes are achieved through the participants' greater ability to provide more informed help to immediate family as well as to their communities. For example, helping their children with homework adds to the likelihood of those children being more successful at school and increases the likelihood of their completing school. Thus participation in VET has outcomes that translate into a multiplier effect within communities and should be perceived as achieving more than just participation in further training and/or participation in employment.

In the remote context, training for some of the women is not necessarily related to potential work opportunities but can assist in providing help for them, their family and community, 'in the home'. These findings are important comments on the value of unpaid community work and, in this instance, demonstrate how some Indigenous people see unpaid cultural or voluntary community work and looking after family as an occupation, rather than something that is done while unemployed. The notion of employment not specifically tied to paid labour makes it possible for VET learners in Aboriginal communities to be recognised as gaining positive outcomes from their training, outcomes which promote and facilitate community wellbeing.

Further investigation is needed into the ways whereby structures linking Indigenous training to work opportunities in the specific localities can be established, a priority being an exploration of how training can be more closely connected to the Community Development Employment Program. Furthermore, an approach which recognises and values the work done 'in the home' and among Indigenous communities, and which may be enhanced and enriched by participation in VET needs to be formulated.