Student choice and lifelong learning in New South Wales: minding the gap between rhetoric and reality

This paper will explore the results of more than two decades of bi-partisan policy consistency (Zoellner 2013, pp. 144-8) aimed at increasing the amount of choice available to consumers of marketised VET services as an important mechanism in the encouragement of Australians to increase their commitment to lifelong learning. The introduction of training packages in 1999 allowed VET qualifications to be commoditised in order to facilitate the operations of training markets (Wheelahan 2015, p. 127). Pre-training package 1998 will be used as one comparison point for the examination of national data sets on enrolment patterns in these training products as well as student characteristics of those enrolled in the national training system. If the implementation of consumer choice in the various state and territory competitive VET marketplaces has facilitated increased commitment to lifelong learning, it should be expected that increased numbers of students are studying in a wider range of occupations with improved access to the more than 4,000 training providers operating in the training market (National Centre for Vocational Education Research 2018b, p. 5). The performance of New South Wales (NSW) will be compared to these national trends.

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