Vocational education and training in regional, rural and remote Australia

Jobs and Skills Australia has released its latest report: Vocational education and training in regional, rural and remote Australia, which examines the availability and accessibility of vocational education and training (VET) for students outside of Australia’s capital cities; the initial findings of the report will help inform future research and analysis by the JSA in this area.

The report uses data collected by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) and covers the differences between Australia’s regions and how these interact with access to VET; the availability of training options in regional, rural and remote areas; and VET activity and supply in regional and remote areas, compared to metropolitan areas, in terms of the quantity and type of training accessed, the nature of registered training organisation training delivery, and student experience and sentiment.

Key findings include:

• training is driven to a large extent by local industries with higher enrolments in agricultural and engineering-related training when compared with major cities
• training in essential services, such as health and education, has an equal weighting across major cities and regions
• VET students in regional Australia are more likely to be Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students or from a lower socioeconomic background than their counterparts from major cities
• student satisfaction is consistently high across regions and over time.

Work on this report started under the former National Skills Commission, and follows an intendent review conducted by the Australian Government into rural, regional and remote education by Emeritus Professor John Halsey in 2018 (Halsey Review) and the National Regional, Rural and Remote Tertiary Education Strategy (Napthine Review) in 2019. This work in the report is complementary to the projects being overseen by the Regional Education Commissioner.

A copy of the report is accessible here.