Apprenticeship and Vocational Training Enrolments

Indicator Rationale

Vocational education and training is important not only because it caters for the inclinations and aptitudes of many young people, but also because it addresses existing and foreshadowed skill shortages.  Apprenticeships and vocational training are designed to be responsive to the needs of industry by providing specialised skills and pathways to new careers for employees.  They are also measures of the investment business makes in education and skilling of the workforce.

"Education is the key to creating a dynamic, successful community and improving all Victorians' life opportunities.  Victoria must be a place where... people of all ages are motivated to keep learning... To participate in the modern economy, more adult Victorians need to increase their skills through further education and training... (All) Victorians should have the opportunity to continue to learn throughout their lives." (State of Victoria, 2005)  In Growing Victoria Together, one of the progress measures towards a higher quality education and training system is an increase in the level of participation in vocational education and training of adults aged 25-64 years.

Data Source

Office of Training and Tertiary Education (OTTE), Student Statistical Data Collection.

Data are provided to OTTE by the approximately 600 recognised providers of training and further education in Victoria - TAFE Institutes; TAFE Divisions of Universities; Adult Community Education (ACE) providers; and private providers.  Some information is collected from students via standard questions on enrolment forms.

A set of guidelines provides information and guidance to these providers about OTTE's statistical submission requirements.  These guidelines incorporate the Australian Vocational Education and Training Management Information Statistical Standard (AVETMISS), which provides a framework and definition for information related to students, training programs and providers of training and further education.

The data relate to all students enrolled in a course of vocational education and training (VET) with a recognised provider of training and further education in the reference calendar year.  Non-vocationally oriented enrolments are excluded.  A course is assigned a VET status during the process of accreditation based on the intent of the curriculum (i.e. whether that intent is to provide vocationally relevant skills or not).  The data include all VET courses, not just those leading to a formal qualification.

Measure

The measure for this indicator is based on that reported in Growing Victoria Together, but reports as a rate to better enable comparisons between geographic areas.  While OTTE has supplied data on enrolments to CIV, the calculation of the rate has not been made by OTTE and therefore should not be attributed to OTTE.

People Aged 25-64 Years Enrolled in Vocational Education and Training: expressed as a rate per 100 population.  The ABS Estimated Resident Population (ERP) for the mid-point of the calendar year is used.

While this measure could be interpreted as a 'participation rate' of people in VET, caution should be exercised in making this interpretation.  The numerator (number of enrolments) and the denominator (ERP) come from two different data sources which may not be fully comparable.

Notes on data quality and comparability

The geographic basis on which the enrolments data have been compiled is the student's place of usual residence.  Enrolment forms ask students to state "the postcode of the suburb or town in which you usually live".  OTTE uses ABS concordances to convert aggregate data to a Local Government Area (LGA) basis.  This process is one source of potential error in the data, as the assumption is made that the distribution of students within a postcode area (where that postcode area has parts in more than one LGA) is the same as that of the general population.  While the enrolment question and the census usual residence question on which the ERP is based are similar (both using the phrase 'usually live'), the census question gives guidance as to what 'usually live' means whereas the enrolment question does not.

A student's age is determined as at 30 June in the reference year, and is based on stated date of birth.

Not all questions on student enrolment forms are completed.  Of students enrolled with Victorian providers in 2006, 4.8% did not state their date of birth, 0.1% did not state their sex, and 0.3% did not state their place of usual residence.  In addition, students who gave a place of usual residence outside of Victoria (8.0% in 2006) have been excluded from rate calculations.

A small number of students may be enrolled with more than one training provider, and hence may be counted more than once.

Courses in VET may vary in elapsed time from days to years.  Students may even undertake more than one course in a reference year.  The enrolments data (representing a count of students enrolled at any time during the reference year) will give higher numbers than if the data represented a census of students enrolled on a particular date, as the duration of some shorter courses would not include the census date.  This is one reason why the data are not comparable to ABS data on educational participation collected in the Survey of Education and Work and the Census of Population and Housing.  In addition, some people doing short training programs or modules may not report in surveys that they have been studying in the VET system, particularly if all their formal training occurs in the workplace.

As an indication of the relative shortness of some courses, the following statewide data for 2006 has been sourced from Victoria's Vocational Education and Training Statistics: A Pocket Guide and the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (Tables 19, 26, 31).  There were 28.2% more course enrolments than students enrolled, with an average of 7.5 subject/module enrolments per student enrolled.  About one-third of students were enrolled in one module only, with more than half enrolled in fewer than four modules.  The average duration of a module was 32 hours.  While the overall average duration of study per student was 234 hours, it was much lower (less than 50 hours) for courses not leading to an AQF qualification.  Enrolments in non-AQF courses accounted for 29.5% of all course enrolments.

Reference

State of Victoria, 2005.  A Vision for Victoria to 2010 and Beyond: Growing Victoria Together.