Description
This research used a survey to investigate the attitudes of people with a disability towards undertaking training. The findings show very positive attitudes towards training by participants and, although the ability to generalise to the wider population is limited, one thing is clear: generally, people with a disability are willing to undertake VET and consider it a good option in helping them find employment. Some factors affected attitudes more than others, including level of school-based education; highest qualification level completed; whether people had single or multiple disabilities; and, to some extent, gender.Summary
About the research
This paper used a small survey to investigate the attitudes of people with a disability towards undertaking training. Such insights are helpful when there are clear policy imperatives to assist more people with a disability into the workforce. The recognition that working supports the resilience and builds the social capital of both the individual and the community underlies these policies.
Key messages
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The attitudes of participants in the study towards training are overall very positive.
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Characteristics such as prior education level and having a single disability or multiple disabilities did not seem to significantly affect the attitude of the survey participants towards undertaking training, but it was difficult to explore this adequately given the limitations of the data.
- For all qualification levels the three most important reasons people gave for undertaking training were to help them get a job, to gain work skills and to help increase confidence.
The ability to generalise these findings to the wider population is limited due to the small size of the survey, but one thing is clear — generally people with a disability consider VET a good option to assist them in finding employment and they are willing to undertake VET. They do, though, note that many people with a disability will need support to undertake the training.
Tom Karmel
Managing Director, NCVER