At the start of National Skills Week, the NCVER released the 2024 Government funded students and courses data.
At a national level there was a small (-2.7%) decline in students enrolling in government-funded VET programs compared to 2023. The decline was lowest (-0.9%) in students enrolling in full qualifications, compared with a -4.1 drop in students undertaking government-funded ‘short courses’ and a -12.6% decline in ‘stand-alone’ subject enrolments.
The decline in student enrolments was not even across different government-funded providers. In fact ‘non-TAFE government providers’ (referred to in the statistics collection as ‘other government providers’ saw their student numbers increase (+15%) in 2024 compared with 2023.
TAFE Institutes experienced a very modest -0.6% annual decline in students, private training providers (-2.8%) and other training providers (-2.7%) had a small decline, but unfortunately community education providers saw a -4.2% drop in the government-funded students they enrolled.
Looking at the annual change across different government-funded student cohorts in nationally recognised qualifications and the results were mixed:
- Females -1.6%
- Regional and remote -0.7%
- Studied full-time +10.2%
- Unemployed +0.7%
- In school +4.9%
- With a disability +3.3%
- Indigenous +6.2%
Finally it is important to note that the above changes are not nationally consistent. In Western Australia (+5.2%), Queensland (+2.6%) and Victoria (+0.9%) there were increases in the numbers of government-funded students enrolling in VET in 2024.
There were also differences by Training Package – eight packages saw double digit increases in government-funded enrolments in the last 12 months – although they also had relatively small enrolment numbers:
- Chemical, hydrocarbons and refining (+82%, 1,200 enrolments in 2024)
- Local government (+49%, 470 enrolments)
- Public safety (+29%, 450 enrolments)
- National water (+27%, 1,750 enrolments)
- Correctional services (+23%, 380 enrolments)
- Aeroskills (+21%, 1,850 enrolments)
- Transmission, Distribution and Rail (+20%, 1,695 enrolments)
- Police (+11%, 250 enrolments).
In the Top 5 training packages by government-funded enrolments in 2024 there was a mixed pattern when compared with 2023 enrolments:
- Community Services (+3%, 265,115 enrolments in 2024)
- Construction, Plumbing & Services Integrated Framework (+1%, 121,780 enrolments)
- Business Services (-11%, 105,165 enrolments)
- Health (-3%, 67,695 enrolments)
- Tourism, Travel and Hospitality (-14%, 57,560 enrolments).
