Description
The participation of Australians in vocational education and training (VET) varies a great deal in terms of levels of training, industry fields and demographic aspects; that is, age, gender, locality and socioeconomic status. The purpose of this study was to undertake an analysis of various aspects of VET participation by age, gender, socioeconomic status and Australian Qualifications Framework level. Information for Queensland and South Australia is also provided to illustrate the capacity to analyse this information at a state/territory level.Summary
About the research
Responsiveness is a familiar refrain in the vocational education and training (VET) sector. Training providers are being called upon to adapt to emerging skills needs and to build greater flexibility into the system. How they do this depends on how they manage their multiple roles and diverse clientele.
In their study, Teese and Walstab examined population differences in that clientele and identified social, economic and cultural barriers some people face in finding employment. Their report and its companion, Participation in vocational education and training across Australia: A regional analysis, should help the VET sector to find ways to respond to these obstacles and to motivate individuals to take up training options and, where necessary, to reskill in order to find good jobs.
Key messages
- The roles of VET are population-related. That is, VET providers respond to people’s various needs during the different stages of their participation in the workforce.
- The age pattern of participation suggests that the VET sector performs four major roles:
-
– a platform-building role for young commencing workers
– a promotions or skills enrichment role for established workers
– a re-orientation role for older workers
– a personal enrichment role for older workers or people not in the workforce. - These roles are highlighted by the award pattern of participation for different age groups.
– Basic and skilled VET (certificates I and II, and III respectively) dominate the activity of teenagers and young adults.
– Skills enrichment, re-orientation and personal development become more prominent for established workers and older people. - There is a need for greater equity in the system. VET activity rises as socioeconomic status falls. That said, people with lower socioeconomic status are not achieving the higher qualifications which reap the greater rewards from participation in VET.
- These disparities can often be traced back to the type of schooling people received, suggesting that schools have a significant role in shaping aspirations and preparing young people for post-compulsory education and employment.
This report is one of twelve produced by a consortium of the National Institute of Labour Studies, Flinders University, and the Centre for Post-compulsory Education and Lifelong Learning, University of Melbourne, looking into the relationship between the country’s future skill needs and the VET system. For a synthesis of the consortium’s entire program of work, see A well-skilled future by Sue Richardson and Richard Teese.
Tom Karmel
Managing Director, NCVER
.
Executive summary
This report has been prepared as part of the consortium research program, A well-skilled future: Tailoring VET to the emerging labour market. This research program examines the evolving labour market and changing work organisation and management in the context of the vocational education and training (VET) sector and its role in the development of the appropriate levels, types and quantities of skills required to satisfy the future demands of Australian industry. The research reports have been produced by researchers from the National Institute of Labour Studies, Flinders University, and the Centre for Post-compulsory Education and Lifelong Learning, University of Melbourne. This report and a companion report, Participation in vocational education and training across Australia: A regional analysis, identify variations in VET participation.
For Australia to have a highly skilled workforce calls for a responsive national system of vocational education and training. But there is also an implication that there is a readiness amongst Australians to take up opportunities for training and to undertake the work to which training opportunities lead or which are offered through that work.
The participation of Australians in vocational education and training varies a great deal in terms of levels of training, industry fields, and a range of demographic aspects—age, gender, Aboriginality, locality, and socioeconomic status. It is important to examine population differences in VET participation because variations in participation may signal barriers to the capacity of Australians to take up emerging opportunities in the workforce which depend on a training effort.
The barriers may be ones of access. These include remoteness from a provider, shortage of training places, tuition costs, or poor attainment at school. Or they could be barriers of perception in which the need for training is not recognised or not considered relevant to individual aspirations. Barriers may be economic, such as high opportunity costs or low wage dividends to training at certain levels, or they may be cultural and involve preferences or poor information and understanding of training opportunities.
Analysing variations in participation may suggest the existence of barriers, but this analysis does not establish that these do exist and may only provide indications of the nature of any barriers that might exist. Other research strategies are needed to test interpretations of differences in participation levels. These include macro-economic studies to determine the strength of aggregate factors, such as returns on investment in training, case studies of participation in different regional contexts, and qualitative research on economic and cultural factors operating in these contexts.
Contextual studies are valuable because they focus not only on individual factors affecting participation in VET, but on the role of VET in community development, both economic and social. But which contexts should be chosen for this more detailed research?
A first step in this mapping exercise is to apply a social area methodology to data on participation gathered by training authorities and consolidated in AVETMISS. Social area methodology refers to research procedures which use a geographical indicator of socioeconomic status to measure and compare participation in education and training. A social area analysis should be sensitive to the two broad kinds of barriers mentioned above—barriers of access and barriers of perception.
The technical details of the methodology are presented in the support document of this report. However, in brief, our approach has been to apply a social ranking to students in VET, based on the postcode of their residential address and the Australian Bureau of Statistics Index of Relative Socio Economic Disadvantage, to divide our population into equal-size bands of socioeconomic status, and to compare participation in VET at different award levels and for different age groups and gender across these bands. Some previous work along these lines has been reported in McIntyre (2002), Teese (2001), and Teese et al. (2003).
The data used in this report are for 2001. It is planned to undertake an analysis using more recent data and involving a wider range of information as soon as this is available.
The analysis presented in this report is contained in 18 tables and 45 charts—a third each for Australia as a whole, Queensland, and South Australia. No attempt has been made to provide comment on all these tables and charts. They offer very detailed analyses of various aspects of VET participation, when this is broken out by age, gender, socioeconomic status and Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) level. The information for Queensland and South Australia is provided simply to illustrate the capacity of the social area methodology to provide analyses at a state level, though the South Australian tables are also useful in the context of the review of the South Australian Certificate of Education.
The findings highlight the importance of identifying economic and cultural barriers to participation in order to assist the VET sector to respond effectively to skill shortages and also to ensure equitable access to VET opportunities and good jobs. VET provision occurs in a wide range of different social contexts, and the barriers to higher or more equitable participation are likely to vary in nature and importance. The role of schools in shaping aspirations and in preparing young people has been identified as a key part of the social landscape.
This report is divided into two parts. This section is a discussion of the approach and a summary of a number of key general findings. It discusses the range of roles played by the VET system in Australia and looks at participation at different award levels of VET within this framework. The support document contains all the tables and charts.
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