VET News

What Does High Quality Training Look Like?

A priority for governments is ensuring public confidence in the quality and value of vocational education and training (VET) available to learners throughout their lives.

The delivery of high-quality teaching, learning and assessment is an important element of this and is known to directly impact on outcomes for students. However, little research has examined what high-quality training delivery looks like in practice and how it might be measured.

Based on consultations with registered training organisations (RTOs) from the public, private, adult and community education (ACE), and enterprise segments of the sector, this research investigated how the quality of delivery in VET is currently defined and measured. It also set out to identify the barriers to high-quality delivery, as well as approaches that might better encourage and sustain high-quality delivery into the future.

Key messages

• The definition of high-quality VET delivery differs among RTO types, depending on their purposes, missions and goals, their student types, the courses and qualifications they offer, and the context in which they operate.
• The key principles underpinning a definition of high-quality delivery in VET, which are common across the RTOs participating in this project, are that it is:
  • transformational: how well students are achieving
  • student-centred: how well students are supported and encouraged to learn
  • fit for purpose: how well stakeholders’ needs and purposes are met
  • evolutionary: how well delivery adapts to changing stakeholder and workplace needs.
• The size and type of an RTO influences the ability to define and measure the quality of VET provision.
  • Quality appears to be most easily described and measured in enterprise-based RTOs, smaller private RTOs and ACE providers, where the scope of delivery tends to be narrower and there is direct oversight of the teaching and learning environment. The resources and expertise required to collect and analyse data, however, can be limited in smaller RTOs.
  • Larger RTOs tend to have more resources to collect and analyse data, but monitoring quality in organisations supporting a broad spectrum of students with diverse backgrounds and needs, a large suite of courses and qualifications and multiple delivery sites, can be challenging.
• RTOs use a wide range of information and data to evaluate quality, including a mix of quantitative data, qualitative data, and information gained through informal ways.
• High-quality delivery depends on many factors, some of which are beyond the control of RTOs. The barriers identified by participating RTOs include a compliance view of quality, funding, the quality of training packages and difficulties in recruiting, developing and retaining teachers and trainers.

Download the full report here.

Resister for the NCVER webinar which will review the findings of the report. 

Date posted Mar 24, 2022