VET workforce older, casual, better educated – and heaven knows how big

Workforce data for VET lags way behind what’s available on higher education, with studies offering vastly different estimates of how many people work in the sector. While TAFEs provide 70 per cent or more of VET in Australia, a new report has found that TAFE staff account for only about 16 per cent of the overall VET workforce. But the finding reflects the unreliability of VET workforce statistics more than any skewing of staff numbers, according to the report from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). The report, ‘Vocational education and training workforce data 2008: A compendium’, suggests statistical collection will need to improve markedly before authorities can get a clear picture of the national VET workforce. The report includes studies that claim the number of training practitioners in TAFEs was around 61,000 in 2005 according to the ABS Survey of Education and Training (SET), 19,000 in 2006 according to the census, and 36,000 according to an NCVER staffing study in mid-2008. Estimates of practitioners employed by non-TAFE providers are even more wildly divergent – 7600 if you believe the census, or 282,100 if you believe the SET. And while the SET provides the highest estimate of the size of the overall TAFE workforce – 70,800 compared to 57,800 from the more recent NCVER study – either number is just a fraction of the entire 443,200-strong VET workforce, as estimated by the SET. The findings illustrate the difficulties facing VET authorities trying to find baseline data for workforce planning and policy development. “Large numbers of people are involved in delivering vocational education and training, but these numbers are not being captured and reported consistently or comprehensively,” the report says. “There is no targeted and consistent collection of data on the VET workforce and information has to be inferred from other surveys and collections.” Census data is “of little value” for this purpose, the report says, while the SET data ignores the large numbers of people who teach VET in a casual capacity, often as a second job. The staffing study also under-counted casuals and completely overlooked private providers. The report explores alternative approaches to gathering VET workforce data. “There are two possible ways of collecting the information,” it says. “One is an administrative collection using information already stored in the HR systems of training organisations. The other is a direct survey of employees.” The report recommends a combination of the two approaches. “A regular administrative collection of the public workforce, supplemented with a survey of employees in both public and private providers every few years, would provide a comprehensive picture of the VET workforce in Australia.” But under current arrangements, VET statistics remain far less reliable and comprehensive than those compiled on higher education. Higher education student and course statistics have recently expanded to include much private sector provision – which is ignored in most VET studies – while annual statistics on higher education staffing have been compiled since 1992. The Bradley review recommended that NCVER research be extended to cover the whole tertiary sector. The NCVER is keen to take on this expanded role, but says it would need an integrated statistical system incorporating both sectors. This would necessitate expanding VET statistics to cover the burgeoning private VET sector. NCVER statisticians have also argued for a “unique student identifier” allowing students to be tracked between sectors (CR, 31.08.09). In December, COAG gave in-principle support to the introduction of a unique student identifier from 2012. Meanwhile, despite their widely divergent estimates of the size of the VET workforce, the studies in the new report offer fairly consistent data about trends within the workforce. VET professionals are getting older, they say, with one study finding that over 38 per cent were aged between 45 and 64 in 2005 – compared to just 30 per cent eight years earlier. The proportion of TAFE training practitioners aged over 55 rose from about 12 per cent in 1996 to almost 30 per cent 10 years later, the study found. Another found that the proportion aged 60 or over had increased from 8 per cent in 2002 to 13 per cent in 2008. Almost half of the VET workforce is employed on a casual or sessional basis, and part-time employment is also on the rise, particularly among women. The staffing study found that the proportion of full-time TAFE practitioners had generally decreased between 2002 and 2008, including falls from 46 to 20 per cent in South Australia and 44 to 35 per cent in Victoria. The SET data also revealed that the proportion of TAFE professional staff with postgraduate qualifications had increased markedly, from just over 15 per cent in 2001 to almost 35 per cent in 2005. The proportion of degree-qualified TAFE professionals also increased, from around 13 to 20 per cent over the same period. The proportion of TAFE training staff with specialist education and training degrees or postgraduate qualifications almost tripled to over 30 per cent between 2001 and 2005. The proportion with no university or VET teaching qualifications declined about 10 percentage points to about 58 per cent. While there was a slight improvement in the qualifications profile of private providers, the study found they lagged behind their TAFE counterparts. Over 90 per cent of their training staff held no specialist education and training qualifications in 2005. Go to www.ncver.edu.au/publications/2218.html