Measuring educational outcomes: Vocational education and training

This paper was presented to the NatStats08 conference Working together for an informed Australian society in November 2008.

The vocational education and training (VET) sector has a long tradition of measuring and reporting outcomes. The public face of this is the Annual national report of the Australian vocational education and training system published (and tabled in the Commonwealth Parliament) since 1994. The reporting framework has undergone a number of changes corresponding to revision in high-level strategies developed by the former Australian National Training Authority (ANTA). ¹ This, however, is about to change. The catalyst for a radical examination of the reporting framework is the Council of Australian Governments’ (COAG) reform agenda. This reform agenda is shaking up the funding relationships between the Commonwealth and the states and will place increasing reliance on measuring and reporting outcomes as distinct from focusing on the resources used (that is, inputs).

In this paper, I provide a history of performance measurement for the VET sector, beginning with the creation of the Australian National Training Authority and ending with what we know of the current reforms. As well as describing the various measures, I discuss the challenges that are thrown up by indicators. I conclude with my suggestions for indicators for the vocational education and training system.

1 In 2005 the Australian National Training Authority was abolished and its functions assumed by the Department of Education, Science and Training (now the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations).