For many years, success for public vocational education has largely focused on completions rates. While completions remain important, it tells only part of the story of what happens in your classrooms, workshops and simulated workplaces every day.
For VET and TAFE teachers and staff, the real measure of success is more three dimensional. Do leaders leave with the skills, confidence and capability to apply their learning in the real world, and do they achieve their goals?
Most TAFE learners do not enrol simply to get a qualification (although some do). Increasingly, learners are returning to education multiple times across their careers to upskill, reskill, or adapt to changing roles. In this context, success cannot be reduced to a single moment of completion. It must be understood as part of an ongoing journey of learning and work, as the VDC wrote about in this piece earlier this year.
A recent report, Employment Outcomes for Victorian TAFE Learners by the Nous Group and commissioned by the Victorian TAFE Association, took a deep look at the wide range of data and metrics of TAFE success. Their recommendation is that employment-related goals are a critical measure of success.
This is because 91 per cent of Victorian TAFE learners achieve their employment-related goals. These outcomes include gaining employment, progressing in an existing role, building new skills, or moving into further study. This employment goal success also holds where a learner partially completes their qualification.
For educators, this is a powerful affirmation of the work happening across the sector every day.
It also reinforces a broader shift underway across Australia’s skills system. Research from Jobs and Skills Australia highlights that lifelong learning is no longer optional. It is essential to maintaining employability in a labour market shaped by technological change and economic transformation.
This has important implications for how we think about success in VET and TAFE.
The Nous report reflects this reality by showing that TAFE learners absolutely do achieve their employment goals. Encouragingly, the findings show that these outcomes are being achieved consistently across the critical industries identified as priorities by the Victorian Government.
- 94 per cent in the clean economy
- 93 per cent in advanced manufacturing and defence
- 92 per cent in health technologies
- 92 per cent in construction and;
- 90 per cent in agribusiness.
Just as importantly, these outcomes are being delivered across diverse learner cohorts.
The report shows that 94 per cent of outer regional learners, and 91 per cent of Indigenous learners, women, and those experiencing socio-economic disadvantage, are achieving their employment goals either fully or in part.
The Nous findings confirm what many educators already know: learning that is meaningful and applied can lead to real employment outcomes, even when a qualification is not completed in a traditional way. Considering employment goal outcomes makes VET learner achievements more three dimensional than a singular focus on completion rates.
These outcomes are the result of strong industry engagement and the deep expertise of TAFE educators who understand how to translate curriculum into job-ready skills.
The VTA hears from staff across the TAFE network regularly that the perception of TAFE is not reflective of a high quality, innovative, and industry-focused education. This data clearly contradicts this sentiment.
If we want to strengthen our reputation, and safeguard our future – measuring employment outcomes is the way forward.
On behalf of the TAFE network, we call on all educators to take up the 91% statistic in conversations on campus, with funding partners and on social media.
Because we can change the way TAFE is perceived.
By Alex White: CEO of the Victorian TAFE Association.
