There has been a fair bit of research and other work done on this topic, understandably. This report from NCVER is the latest, drawing on and summarising a lot of it. It suggests that “COVID-19 has significantly reorganised the business practices of training providers and its impacts on the sector will be long-lasting.”
The report, authored by Daniella Trimboli, Melinda Lees and Zhihui Zhang, addressed the following four research questions:
- How has the pandemic impacted the VET sector overall?
- What impacts has the pandemic had on VET enrolments and completions within various student cohorts and types of training?
- What impact has the pandemic had on RTO resilience and business sustainability? To what extent have RTOs change their business operations and practices in response to the pandemic?
- What lessons might be learned from the impacts that will support potential responses to alleviate identified pain points should the pandemic persist, or disruptions of a similar nature occur in the future?
It did this through data analysis and by interviewing peak bodies and training providers.
Overall findings
It found that COVID brought with it significant challenges to the VET sector, including the effects of inflexible training package requirements for mandatory work placements. There were also effects on “student enrolments and engagement, [and] staff wellbeing and retention.” In addition, reduced student enrolments had significant impacts on provider viability. However, it’s suggested COVID 19 exacerbated rather than caused these challenges.
COVID 19’s effects were mitigated somewhat as providers rapidly adjusted by moving to online or blended delivery approaches and making “changes to hygiene practices … new approaches associated with flexible work arrangements, communication strategies, and wrap-around services such as mental health and wellbeing programs.”
Finally, it found that “students in disadvantaged cohorts were most severely impacted, as were students and training providers located in the states or territories where infection numbers were high and public health mandates proportionately more intense.”
The issues and impacts
One issue was the lack of teacher and trainer competence in multi-modal delivery, but on the plus side providers and their staff adapted rapidly and learned along the way. In addition, there were impacts on apprentices and trainees, who “were particularly affected by the pandemic-related restrictions, with more than one in five Australian apprentices and trainees reporting that the on-job-training component of their study had been delayed by COVID-19.” There were also high numbers of contract suspensions and “significant declines in new apprentice and trainee contract commencements.”
How have enrolments and completions been affected?
Using a comparative analysis of a range of data sets covering 2019 to 2021 showed that “student enrolments declined sharply in the early stages of the pandemic, before bouncing back in late 2020 and into 2021.” Completions were also down, likely caused by delays in students being able to meet certain practical training requirements or their ability to access online training and resources. Many providers claimed that students found it ‘too difficult’ to continue studying.
What impact has the pandemic had on RTO resilience and business sustainability?
According to the report, training providers located in New South Wales and Victoria were more severely impacted than some in other states and territories. “In addition, community education and private training providers interviewed were, overall, more affected than TAFE.” On the one hand it forced providers to adapt quickly to changing dynamics that COVID bought with it and, for some, force them “to reorganise what had become a fragmented organisational environment, and/or to balance the need to address emerging issues in the short-term with the requirement to maintain compliance and financial security in the long-term.”
What lessons might be learned?
The final part of the report’s executive summary says it all. It boils down to the system and particularly its providers needing to be able “to reconcile the need to be resilient — adaptive, responsive and, in some ways, short-term focused — with the need to be sustainable, that is, having the space to experiment, innovate, and make steady, long-term plans. This, the report suggests, “is a question that will likely remain important for training providers and the VET sector at large for some time.”
A quick guide to other research
This site enables readers to access much of NCVER’s research (scroll to the bottom of the page), and earlier issues of VDC News also summarised most of this work. The report itself references a whole raft of work that has looked into this issue, so having a look at the references cited could be beneficial.
