Employers engaging with training system – NCVER

Employers continue to engage with the accredited training system while increasing their use of unaccredited and informal training in 2023, according to a report from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER).

The report is derived from the 2023 Survey of Employers’ Use and Views of the VET System, which collected information from 6,290 employers between March and June 2023.

The biennial survey found that 56.8 pecent of Australian employers engaged with at least one form of accredited training through the vocational education and training (VET) system in the past twelve months.

Employers can engage with accredited training in three ways – by having jobs that require vocational qualifications, by employing apprentices and trainees or by using other nationally recognised training.  

Employers using apprentices and trainees increased to 31.3 percent in 2023, up 3.9 percentage points from 2021, while employers’ use of the other forms of accredited training remained steady.

When it comes to unaccredited training, 54.4 percent of employers used this to meet their skill needs in 2023, an increase of 2.2 percentage points from 2021. Employers who used informal training increased to 81.2 percent of the total, up 4.6 percentage points.

NCVER Managing Director Simon Walker said: “While around half of Australia’s employers use the national accredited VET system to train their staff, comparable numbers are using unaccredited training to meet their staff skill needs.

“Less than 10 percent of employers provided no training to their staff over the past twelve months.”

Employer satisfaction with the various forms of accredited training remained stable while satisfaction with unaccredited training increased by 2.6 percentage points to 86.1 percent in 2023.

Picture: NCVER