Understanding student motivations is important – comment by CEO Jenny Dodd

NCVER’s recently released research report, ‘The student journey: the many faces of completion and non-completion in VET‘ by Wibrow, Hall and Griffin is a useful addition to an understanding of completions. The report draws out that applying a blunt completion indicator of program completion as the main reportable success factor fails to tell the nuanced story of what motivates a learner to enrol in VET.

Both TDA and ITECA, the private training provider peak body, gave such feedback to the 2023 completions working group that delivered the very good report, National vocational education and training completions (Papadimitriou, D 2023, National vocational education and training completions, Skills SA, Adelaide). We both provided multiple examples where either funding arrangements or student motivations lead to enrolments in full qualifications when only the skill set is desired.

One of VET’s great attributes is that there are reasonably low requirements to enter a qualification. This makes it accessible for all. However, it also means that students can trial, they can grab a piece of learning, they can mix and match. Thus, there are often complex, non-linear and quite nuanced reasons why learners do not complete the full qualification.

The NCVER authors have also examined international contexts. They conclude, “international research has also considered reasons for non-completion, suggesting the need to look at what happens after non-completion to understand whether the incomplete training has been successful in some way” (p4). That is, students might enrol in a full qualification but when the student has got what they want, i.e. often a skill set, that is enough. The NCVER report states “based on this measure, an additional 19.8% of students who commenced in 2016 had a successful outcome with VET. This is on top of the 49.5% who successfully completed their program” (p1).

The authors also turn their attention to specific groups of students, such as those in regions and conclude that “while remote students have a slightly lower program completion rate than all students (47.9% compared with 49.5%), a higher proportion complete all enrolled subjects (24.4% compared with 19.8%). Considering both measures together means that 72.3% of remote students had some training success, compared with 69.3% of all students” (p1). However, the findings are not as positive for either First Nations students or students with disability.

The report writers also suggest that the proposed reforms to qualification design could address students’ ability to use their “prior or current training” (p1). TDA has been calling for qualifications to recognise prior learning for some time, so this is a welcome suggestion.

One of their next steps suggests that linking data sets in VET with higher education would help understand student movement between the sectors. With the work being undertaken in the Accord Implementation process this might be a first step for the new Australian Tertiary Education Commission. Understanding students and their enrolment characteristics can only help with the goal of harmonisation.

Thank you NCVER for a very useful addition to the story of completions that is contained in this report.