This paper was a keynote address at the Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association (AVETRA) conference held in Canberra in April 2012. The author notes that industry is arguably the key stakeholder in the Australian vocational education and training (VET) sector, but is not a single actor nor a disinterested consumer of…

"Research Messages 2014" is a collection of summaries of research published by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) in 2014 in the context of changing economic, industrial, social and education conditions, organised under the following broad categories: (1) Productivity: to sustain and build Australia's human…

Located differentially (and to its detriment) within a status hierarchy of knowledge, vocational education has been called upon to satisfy an increasing range of political and social needs, including meeting the needs of industry and government and catering for increasing pupil diversity. Faced with stubbornly immobile rates of school completion…

In the higher education sector most students enrol in a course with the intention of obtaining a qualification. In the vocational education and training (VET) sector many students tend to complete only some units of competencies or modules of a course. This study analysed the progress until 2000 of students who commenced a TAFE course in 1997, and…

Across OECD countries, governments are seeking policies to make education more effective while searching for additional resources to meet the increasing demand for education. The 2009 edition of "Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators" enables countries to see themselves in the light of other countries' performance. It provides a rich,…