Marketisation and regulation of vocational education and training

This chapter is part of a collection that aims to provide a more balanced and well-rounded perspective on issues of marketisation, in particular by exploring critical public sector market failures in areas such as employment services and vocational education and training (VET). The author shows why the choices to purchase and supply services are driven by factors that ensure that competition will never drive up service quality. In the summary, the author argues that VET once held a proud place in Australia's education system, providing opportunity along a less academically and more practically oriented path. While interest in and need for VET has not lost currency, the sector has been drawn into a downward reputational spiral. Reforms have been introduced in abundance to reverse the problems of VET, but instead have contributed to loss of status and scandal after scandal. At the heart of the debilitation of the VET sector has been lack of respect for and support for teaching professionalism in the reform process.

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