The current, various policies for fees and charges in the public vocational education and training (VET) system in each state and territory are the focus of this report. It finds that due to a host of reasons there is little to no consistency to fees and charges across Australia, and many variations between public VET providers within the same state and territory. Implications arising from this finding include the difficulty to analyse the impact of fees and charges on student participation, and the difficulty for students to compare course costs between institutions. Additionally, if a nationally consistent policy for fees and charges was introduced, it should be developed from a set of agreed principles.
This report investigates the ways that the various education sectors in Australia (schools, vocational education and training, adult and community education, and higher education) are funded. The paper acknowledges it is difficult to get comparable data for all sectors and discusses the implications of changing some aspects of funding arrangements so that a cross-sectoral funding model could be developed.