New NCVER modelling has revised trade apprentice completion rates upwards. But the rates still aren’t good – and they’re virtually unchanged in non-trades areas like administration and sales. Apprenticeship completion rates in trade and technical fields are about a quarter ...

The commission's report on the VET workforce is of mixed quality, says John Mitchell. The Productivity Commission‘s recent report on the VET workforce is a major piece of work containing both strengths and weaknesses. It is a pity there are ...

I hope that the thrust of the findings [in the Skills Australia and the Productivity Commission reports] is underpinned more by evidence that lobbying pressures writes Llandis Barratt-Pugh If the first wave of vocational education and training (VET) reform was ...

Indigenous students are engaged with the university experience but completiion rates are lower than the general student population Susan Page and Christine Asmar explore why In comparison to their non-indigenous peers, indigenous students are just as satisfied with their university ...

Student demand and industry demand aren’t the same thing. In May 2009, with the Bradley report still warm from the presses, the Rudd government’s second budget heralded a “new era” for universities. “This reform will ensure universities cater to the ...

TAFE directors accuse commission of misjudging levels of teacher qualifications in public VET colleges The Productivity Commission included data from one undisclosed state in Australia, to highlight concerns about qualifications in sections of the TAFE workforce, TAFE Directors Australia say. ...

All VET providers – not just private colleges – should be more transparent, says Skills Australia. Private VET providers would be forced to divulge full details of their services and success rates, and TAFEs would have to boost their transparency, ...

Universities are rewriting the rules about what a teaching and learning space should look, feel and act like, writes Matthew Lynch The traditional institutional spaces that have dominated Australia’s landscape of higher education are being supplemented with a new spatial ...

It’s time we got past this whole sector thing, writes Stuart Middleton I have just returned home from the Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association conference in Melbourne, and very good it was too, with interesting papers, good keynotes ...

Among challenges will be convincing people who have not seen the transformative nature of a university education first hand what it means and why the cost is worth it, write Larissa Behrendt and Steven Larkin. Despite the good will of ...