The impact of disadvantage on VET completion and employment gaps

Increasing educational attainment is generally tied to better employment outcomes. The vocational education and training (VET) sector is often used as an entry point into post-compulsory education for individuals who have experienced disadvantage in their lives. But does increasing participation in VET by disadvantaged individuals necessarily lead to the same benefits as experienced by their non-disadvantaged peers? Specifically, do disadvantaged learners have similar completion rates and employment outcomes as their non-disadvantaged peers? Using data from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research's (NCVER's) National VET Provider Collection and the Student Outcomes Survey, the authors find both completion and employment gaps exist between different groups of disadvantaged learners and their non-disadvantaged peers, but that closing the completion gap will not necessarily result in the closing of the employment gap.

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