Profiling the national vocational education and training workforce

• The vocational education and training (VET) workforce has a strategic role in the economy in equipping the workforce at large with the skills needed by industry. It is important that the VET sector is able to plan for the future and can do so on the basis of reliable projections of its own workforce. At the moment there are no reliable projections.
  
  
• The VET workforce is not well understood statistically. There are several weaknesses in the currently available data which impede future workforce planning. These include:
• • no single accepted measure of employment levels, with estimates of the TAFE workforce ranging from 39 000 to 90 000
  • no consistent definitions in TAFE administrative systems of key workforce concepts such as 'employee', 'teacher' and 'permanent'.
    
    
• The proportion of people engaged on a casual or sessional basis in TAFE is much higher than is found in the workforce as a whole. This may act as a brake on enhancing professional capability, as non-permanent staff tend to have shorter tenure and, in general, less opportunity to participate in professional development exercises.
  
  
• In common with the workforce in general, the VET workforce is ageing. Although there is no current problem of labour supply, there will be a high number of people retiring in coming years, particularly those employed by TAFE institutes.
  
  
• There are mixed messages on the qualifications of the VET workforce. While the proportion of VET professionals holding a post-school qualification is relatively high at two-thirds, and higher still in TAFE at four in five, relatively few have a qualification in education or training. This proportion will need to increase if vocational education and training is to remain quality assured.
  
  
• The profile of the TAFE workforce appears to have more in common with those in higher education and schooling than it does with other parts of the VET workforce, such as those employed by non-TAFE providers or those providing training within enterprises. Movement of employees across the VET workforce form a potential recruitment pool for TAFE institutes grappling with an ageing workforce, but this may raise issues about standards and modes of teaching and learning.

In Australia at the present time there is a gap in information relating to people employed as vocational education and training (VET) professionals. There have been a series of earlier studies which have examined various jurisdictions, notably Victoria, and a number of limited surveys have focused on a particular issue. However, to date, no national profile of the VET or technical and further education (TAFE) workforce has been undertaken.

This report consolidates two studies. The first is a national study of the TAFE workforce-that is, those working in TAFE institutions-using point-in-time administrative data from the states and territories as at June 2002. The second forms part of a larger Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) national project entitled Enhancing the capability of the VET professional (Dickie et al. 2004). This second study, which covers those working in both private and public registered training organisations, relied primarily on two Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) surveys-the Census of Population and Housing, and the Survey of Education and Training-for the years 1996 to 2001. Both surveys provide a national picture.

Overall, data were found to be inconsistent, both across states and territories and in data sources. For the national study of the TAFE workforce, only two data elements were collected on a consistent basis across jurisdictions. These were age and sex. There were also no consistent definitions across jurisdictions of key workplace concepts such as 'teacher' and 'employee'. The ABS data, while providing national demographic data on the VET workforce, were not especially useful for examining job characteristics, such as working hours and employment status. There were also discrepancies in fields, such as numbers employed and employment status, depending on the data source used. Nevertheless, some broad observations on the nature of the VET workforce can be made.

Key findings

The work of VET professionals is broadening

VET professionals are made up of VET practitioners-those involved in a range of 'direct' activities, such as delivery, development, and review and assessment of courses or modules-and other professional staff who are involved in indirect activities, such as administrative support, marketing programs and management. Over the period 1997-2001, VET professionals became more involved in direct activities, and somewhat less involved in indirect activities, with an overall effect of greater multi-tasking.

VET professionals are mostly VET practitioners

Most VET professionals spend at least some time involved in direct activities and therefore most can be considered VET practitioners. However, the amount of time spent on direct activities is highly varied. Among VET practitioners employed in a TAFE organisation, around one in two spend at least half of their time on direct activities. Outside TAFE, most VET practitioners spend little time on direct provision. Indeed, a clear majority of VET practitioners employed by other organisations providing education and training spend very little time on direct activities. The implication is that these VET practitioners are not employed primarily to provide vocational education and training.

VET professionals are no older than the workforce at large

The age profile of VET professionals has moved upwards over the period 1997-2001, with 34% of these people aged 45 years or older in 2001, nearly identical to the proportion of all employed people in Australia in that age bracket (33%). However, VET teachers in TAFE are on average much older than VET professionals taken as a whole (61% aged 45 years or more). They have a similar age profile to that of teachers in the higher education and schools sectors-partly due to the time needed to acquire the skills and experience to teach.

There are roughly equal numbers of male and female teachers in TAFE

The Census of Population and Housing data also indicate that overall, there are more teachers who are part-time than there are those who are full-time. However, more males are in full-time positions than are females. Most TAFE teachers are employed on a non-permanent basis. It also appears that this situation is not confined to the TAFE sector, and that the trend is towards greater use of both part-time and non-permanent staff.

More than two out of three VET professionals have a post-school qualification

Professionals in TAFE are more likely to hold a post-school qualification (eight in ten) than other VET professionals (two in three). Professionals in TAFE are also more likely to hold a VET-related qualification, while those outside TAFE are slightly more likely to hold a bachelor degree or postgraduate qualification. However, most VET practitioners do not have qualifications in education or training, a situation which is being remedied, for permanent staff at least, in some jurisdictions.

Implications for workforce planning

Any national aggregated assessment of the TAFE workforce is influenced by the situation in New South Wales. The NSW TAFE workforce accounts for 45% of the TAFE workforce and over half (52%) of the teaching workforce. NSW TAFE has the highest proportion of part-time, non-permanent teaching staff, a figure likely to be reflected in any national aggregate.

These findings have important implications for workforce planning for VET professionals, particularly teachers in the TAFE sector. Three in five teachers whose main job is in the TAFE sector are aged over 45, almost double the average for the Australian workforce as a whole. They mostly enjoy permanency and are well qualified. Their jobs are broadening. At the same time, the sector is making increasing use of part-time and non-permanent staff, most of whom do not have formal qualifications in education and training. These people now make up a majority of professionals employed in the sector.

Outside the TAFE sector the implications of ageing for workforce planning are less immediate. At the same time, the findings do raise questions about whether VET professionals are sufficiently well accredited to be delivering training, since nine out of ten do not have any qualifications in education or training. Any investigation of this issue must, however, acknowledge that most VET professionals outside the TAFE sector are not primarily employed to provide vocational education and training.

As previously highlighted, the findings must take account of the difficulty in gaining data on the number and characteristics of VET professionals, a situation exemplified by the fact that there is no definitive count of the number employed. More and richer data would go some way towards improving the ability of the sector to engage in workforce planning.

The final part of this consolidated report presents a rationale and options for a regular national data collection of the VET workforce.

Data collection relating to the workforce can be improved in a variety of ways, with the choice of method determined by level of precision required, the character of the data sought, and the costs of obtaining it. Data can be generated in two ways-as a by-product of an administrative system, or freshly generated by way of a survey. In the context of the professional VET workforce, data can be accumulated through an administrative collection undertaken via the human resource management systems of registered training organisations, or a survey of employees. The choice of method depends on a desire for accuracy (an administrative collection) as opposed to more subjective data on attitudes to work and a lower cost (an employee survey).