Vocational education and training is facing some big changes. The federal government is proposing a five-year National Skills Agreement with the states to start next year.
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Articles on Vocational education and training
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To overcome serious shortages of workers, both highly skilled and low-skilled, the government will need to look to migration. But fostering home-grown skills is a better and more enduring solution.
Federal Labor is promising to cover the cost of 465,000 TAFE places, including 45,000 new places. But there’s a chronic shortage of VET teachers and trainers, so that problem has to be fixed first.
Some in government and industry aim to fill Australia’s skills shortages with migration policies. But VET numbers are up, suggesting many Australians are re-skilling. We could encourage more of this.
Our study shows almost one in four university and vocational education students report extremely high levels of distress during the pandemic.
Around 45% of secondary students do VET for employment reasons, while 30% do it for further study.
There are some myths about senior schooling kids and parents need to know. They include the idea everyone needs an ATAR to get into university, and that year 12 must be stressful. Neither are necessarily true.
While skilled migration can help fill short-term gaps, Australia needs a more sustainable, long-term approach to skills matching and development to make the most of the people who are already here.
Women enrolled in STEM courses are often more confident than men, but it hasn’t translated into career success and they are still very much a minority. More needs to be done in workplaces and schools.
Australia loses female talent at every stage of the STEM pipeline. A program in which educators and industry work together to help women gain in-demand skills is one piece in the puzzle.
The pandemic has hit young people very hard. The long-term costs of having them neither studying nor working more than justify investment in a national program to help them enter the workforce.
There is a growing mismatch between what education and training provide and the skills needed in workplaces being reshaped by the digital economy. Advanced apprenticeships can help close the gap.
The Australian government’s JobTrainer programs provides A$1.5 billion in wage support for apprentices and trainees.
Education should equip people not just with specific skills, but also with the knowledge they need to be citizens, and for occupations in which they can develop across the course of their lives.
The Productivity Commission has released a report of its review of a national agreement on the skills workforce and the VET sector.
Reforms in 2014 were similarly aimed at making VET more responsive to industry needs and cutting red tape, all the while pulling funding from VET.
There are five transitions young people aged 16-25 make between school and employment. Most involve some vocational education and training. Some involve university and others no education at all.
There is a significant gap between teenagers’ career knowledge and choices, and the reality of the rapidly changing nature of work.
Market forces don’t work well in education. For-profit businesses are more tempted to exploit loopholes than provide quality service.
Students who get admitted to Connecticut’s career and technical education high schools are more likely to graduate and earn significantly more than peers who barely missed the cut.
Top contributors
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Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Edith Cowan University
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Associate Professor, College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University
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Adjunct Professor, Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, OISE, University of Toronto
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Professor & William G. Davis Chair in Community College Leadership, University of Toronto
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Mitchell Professorial Fellow, Victoria University
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Director, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University
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Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University
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Education Lecturer and Researcher, Monash University
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Research Director at the Centre for Policy Development and PhD Student, Macquarie University
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Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
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Senior Lecturer, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne
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Senior Research Fellow in Youth, Research & Policy Centre, Brotherhood of St Laurence, Honorary Fellow in Education Policy, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne
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Professor in the School of Economics, University of Surrey
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Professor of International Higher Education, UCL
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Vice Chancellor, Victoria University
