Concerns about the poor outcomes from school-based vocational education, which is heavily concentrated in schools serving disadvantaged communities, has led the State Government of Victoria, Australia, to implement major reforms, including abolishing the Victoria Certificate of Applied Learning. Instead, from 2023, learning in vocational education…

The Higher Education Standards Framework 2021 and the Australian Qualification Framework (AQF) set out requirements for recognition of prior learning (RPL) and granting credit in the higher education sector. Credit is a recognition of equivalence in content and learning outcomes between different types of learning and/or qualifications. Credit can…

This publication presents information on employers' use and views of the vocational education and training (VET) system. The findings relate to the various ways in which Australian employers use accredited and unaccredited training to meet their skill needs and their satisfaction with the training. Australian employers can engage with accredited…

This article reports on out-of-field (OOF) geography teaching in Australia. Participants were 298 teachers who responded to a national survey in late 2019. Findings indicate that OOF teaching remains prevalent in Australian geography classrooms which affects students' experience of learning geography. It also reports on the effects of policies in…

This article honours Amy Levai, nee O'Donoghue (1930-2013) who was a member of the Stolen Generations and South Australia's first Aboriginal woman to qualify as an infant teacher. Beginning with Amy's childhood at Colebrook Home and schooling, the article highlights her agency and resilience in countering racism to qualify and teach in the South…

Qualifications frameworks are tools for describing qualifications of an education or training system by classifying them into levels. Each level provides a clear description of what the holder of a qualification knows, understands and is able to do. They are important tools for making qualifications transparent and comprehensible, within and…

There are many examples of the regulatory guardian standing at the entry gate of professional life. None have infiltrated so expansively into the education and entry of a profession as the Office of the Migration Agent Registration Authority (OMARA). Since 2006 the OMARA has dictated the course content requirements for the prescribed qualification…

Early childhood educators with higher qualifications are more likely to demonstrate quality in their practice; but few studies have explored the underlying factors that contribute to this relationship. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theory, this article proposes that the relationship arises from social, as well as educational, inequality. Educators…

"Apprentice and Trainee Outcomes 2021" provides a summary of the outcomes of apprentices and trainees who completed an apprenticeship or traineeship during 2020, with the data collected in mid-2021. The figures are derived from apprentices' and trainees' responses to the National Student Outcomes Survey (SOS), which is an annual survey…

In 2009, Skills Tasmania approached the authors to deliver their Lean Action Learning programme in Tasmania. This programme had run successfully in South Australia for some five years. For Tasmania, a requirement was that participants in the programme be eligible for a nationally recognised VET qualification on completion of the programme. This…

Early childhood teachers have a myriad of possible employment options, with birth to eight years degree qualifications preparing graduates to work in a range of early childhood settings, including prior-to-school. At the same time, early childhood workforce policies in Australia, and elsewhere, are increasingly requiring degree-qualified teachers…

'Transforming the future' can have different connotations in different contexts, but here the author focuses on the way in which the vocational education and training (VET) sector is adapting, anticipating and activating change in response to future skill demands. This discussion paper explores how the sector assists learners to skill, upskill and…

This article offers a global overview of the burgeoning field of micro-credentials and their relationship to lifelong learning, employability and new models of digital education. Although there is no globally accepted definition of micro-credentials, the term indicates smaller units of study, which are usually shorter than traditional forms of…

This document was produced by the authors based on their research for the report "The Best of Both Worlds? Integrating VET and Higher Education" and is an added resource for further information. This support document includes two sections: (1) Tables and Figures; and (2) Literature Review. [For the full report, see ED616032.]

Student participation in work-integrated learning (WIL) is commonly held to enhance graduate employability and employment outcomes. Nevertheless, there exists significant research that questions the nature of this relationship. For many reasons, universities are unlikely to reduce their efforts and interest in WIL for students. However, for both…