Completing an apprenticeship or traineeship delivers significant financial and employment advantages. New research from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research has found that recently completed apprentices and trainees who were employed full-time in 2008 earned 16 per cent more ...

VET marketisation is back on the agenda, with the government’s key skills advisory body proposing a “managed market reform approach” to VET funding. And Skills Australia wants a single national regulatory body covering both VET and higher education. The proposals ...

It would be naive to think that challenging the new equity policy environment, and jockeying for position within it, are just political moves. They are also about what equity is and how it can be addressed, says Trevor Gale. In ...

What are the lessons for providers from the controversial government tender for employment services? The federal government faced a public relations backlash following the recent announcement that respected church-based organisations such as the Wesley Mission had lost their contracts to ...

VET graduate outcomes at the click of a button Information on employment outcomes for VET graduates can now be accessed in an interactive online resource. SOS Online, developed by the NCVER, can assist career counsellors and parents in helping young people ...

Over a quarter of Australian companies plan to reduce their spending on staff training as the recession erodes their bottom lines, a recent survey by the Australian Industry Group has revealed. And the peak industry group has found that businesses ...

The VET professional will more than ever need to be autonomous, independent, critical, appreciative of the broader social and civic goals of education and training while also being a teacher who is intellectually gymnastic, writes Ros Brennan Kemmis. Discussions around ...

Skills Australia has given limited support to a call by the Australian Industry Group for the federal government’s $2 billion Productivity Places Program (PPP) to fund training of skill sets as well as fully fledged qualifications. AiGroup policy manager Michael ...

Social inclusion is very much on the radar of the University of Sydney’s vice-chancellor Dr Michael Spence, writes Julie Hare. There a saying that vice-chancellors of Group of Eight universities like to drag out when describing their august institutions: elite ...

UK experience shows that scholarships help, but they are not the key to an equitable system, says Martin Harris. When higher fees were introduced in the UK in 2006 for full-time undergraduate students, there was widespread concern that this would ...