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In the 2009 budget the Canadian federal government provided funding for the Aboriginal Skills and Training Strategic Investment Fund (ASTSIF) over two years (from April 1, 2009 to March 31, 2011). The fund provided support for short-term, focused initiatives designed to help Aboriginal Canadians obtain the specific training they required to benefit from employment opportunities. This initiative was designed to provide immediate assistance to Aboriginal Canadians affected by the 2008 economic downturn. This economic context required ASTSIF projects to be designed and delivered quickly. As such, projects were constrained by limited time available to fully carry out their planning, implementation and data collection activities. No project was longer than 18 months in duration and all program activities were finalised by March 31, 2011.

The evaluation identified lessons and best practices that could be considered in the design of future projects and programs. In addition, it focused on assessing the impact of the projects on participants as well as on issues related to the design and delivery, particularly the development of partnerships, leveraging, ASTSIF's relationship to other programming, administrative costs, and performance measurement.

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Over the last decade, increases in Ontario university enrollment have outstripped growth in full-time, tenure-stream faculty. Non-full-time faculty, which include sessional and graduate student instructors, play a significant role in addressing increased teaching demands although there is a dearth of public information about hiring trends and considerable variation in conditions of employment. This paper is a preliminary exploration of the employment of sessional and graduate student instructors. The study is based on a detailed review of collective agreements and related documentation, and the analysis of institutional data on employment. Although most Ontario universities do not report the number of non-full-time instructors, the study found relevant data on the websites of five institutions, where in all but one case, the number of sessional instructors had increased in recent years. Based on the limited public data available, the study found that the ratio of sessional instructors to full-time faculty appears to be increasing at some universities while decreasing or remaining stable at others, suggesting that different universities are making very different decisions related to academic staffing.

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This project addresses the nationally recognized need to develop and deliver a robust package of work-based assessment (WBA) tools for health professional students in diverse clinical settings as a means of testing their teamwork competencies and interprofessional collaboration in the workplace. Teamwork competencies are included as both graduate attributes in general and in healthcare curricula in particular but are rarely assessed. The authors provide an assessment framework that not only assesses students individually as team members but also considers a team as a single entity with a view to enhancing team performance. This partnership of one Canadian and four Australian universities reviews and evaluates existing WBA tools for teamwork across the health professions and develops a framework and instruments for formative assessment - including the iTOFT (individual teamwork observation and feedback tool) - that are valid, reliable, feasible and suitable for the provision of timely and constructive feedback to students. The authors will pilot the instruments at multiple sites and evaluate their educational impact over the project's three years. Show less

This profile reports to the Forum of Labour Market Ministers on recent developments of youth in the Canadian labour market in relation to the challenges faced by youth during their transition from school to work and what can be done to improve this transition. The profile communicates its findings in terms of eight outcomes established by the Ministers: work opportunities available to youth; the number of youth who are unemployed; successful entrepreneurial activity by youth; real earnings of youth; the percentage of secondary and postsecondary graduates among the youth population; the number of youth who indicate that their training has been relevant to the jobs they have obtained; the percentage of youth training in trades, technologies and apprenticeable occupations; and access to locally relevant, timely labour market and career planning information by youth. The profile provides three perspectives on the progress made by youth in their transition from school and work. The first, ‘Youth and the labour market’, reports on recent events in the labour market for youth and includes a report on the outcomes set out by the Ministers. The second perspective, ‘Youth at risk’, examines the situation of youth facing barriers that could exclude them from participating fully in school and work. ‘Transition between school and work’ discusses three current issues relating to school-work discussion: the prevalence of the ‘brain drain’ as it relates to youth; the effectiveness of trade and vocational programs in preparing Canadian youth for the workforce; and whether postsecondary graduates are overloaded with debt. The conclusion presents the key issues that emerge from the report. The report includes a summary table of the eight outcomes highlighting recent developments and challenges for each one. Show less

This report proposes that, by combining online courses for theory and in-class learning, hybrid apprenticeship programs may be able to achieve comparable outcomes to traditional in-class programs, but in approximately half the required time. This study examined the Industrial Mechanic Millwright (IMM) apprentice program at two Ontario colleges and found that there were no significant differences in completion rates, grades, satisfaction and engagement levels, retention and completion between traditional teaching methods and a hybrid program.

Conducted from 2011 to 2014, the study examined the IMM program at Durham College, which delivered a traditional in-class, three-year program, and Sault College, which offered a hybrid program where students could complete the program in back-to-back semesters in just 16 months. Both programs consist of an apprenticeship placement with an employer, as well as studies at the college. The study used student grade point averages, data collected from an anonymous online survey and focus group interviews with students, employers and other stakeholders including instructors, school administrators and a representative from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities.

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Entering a (first) postsecondary education (PSE) program represents a critical transition in a person's life, but it is just the beginning of a whole new set of dynamics that can take many different forms. Some students continue in their programs until graduation, proceeding at faster or slower rates. Others switch to another program at the same institution, at an institution of the same kind (college or university) or at a different level of study. Still others abandon their studies, some to return at a later date. The general objective of this report is to provide new and unique empirical evidence concerning the patterns of 'persistence' (or what is sometimes alternatively referred to as 'retention,' especially when viewed from the perspective of individual institutions), as well as educational pathways more generally, of PSE students in Ontario. [The authors] present an analysis of the frequency of various trajectories and graduation rates and use both descriptive statistics and econometric modelling to show how pathways and outcomes vary by students' individual characteristics, family background and educational outcomes at the high school and PSE levels. Throughout, the focus is on Ontario, but comparisons are made with the rest of Canada.

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This fact sheet explores the education and labour market situation of young Canadians aged 15 to 19. In this paper we find that: (1) the proportion of 15 to 19 year old Canadians who are not in employment, education or training (NEET) has fallen over time; (2) in general, countries with lower NEET rates for this age group tend to have a higher typical age of high school graduation; (3) the 15 to 19 year old group is a heterogeneous one with younger Canadians aged 15 and 16 being much more likely to be in school and older youth in this group starting their first transition to postsecondary education or the labour market; and (4) there was very little provincial variation in terms of NEET rates that was statistically significant in 2016.

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The authors note that, despite a stagnation in the average retirement age, there has been a significant delay in retirement amongst Canadians since 1997. In their 2011 article, the authors used the concept of 'expected working life', which is derived in much the same way as life expectancy. The main difference between the two concepts is that, in addition to deaths, expected working life includes job interruptions due to retirements, as measured by the Labour Force Survey (LFS) from 1997 to 2010. The 2011 article pointed to a possible major change in Canadians' retirement behaviour but only took into account those retirements reported by LFS respondents. What would happen to the delayed retirement estimate if not only these 'voluntary' retirements were included, but also employment exits likely to push workers toward retirement? When certain events, such as a layoff, illness, disability or caring for a loved one, occur late in workers' careers, they are often prompted to leave the labour force permanently and take what may be called 'involuntary' retirement - early retirement, but not by preference. Taking these retirements into account will reduce expected working life. In this article, using certain assumptions, the authors assess the impact of these events on expected working life.

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This review by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) offers insight into how microcredentials are meeting the evolving needs of today's learners in the province. Ontario established itself early as a leader in the microcredential space; the province made significant investments in program development and awareness building, and pursued a framework for quality assurance. While data gaps preclude a full and complete investigation, the information available suggests that, in Ontario, microcredentials are best suited to upskilling, that is, supplementing adult learners' skills and experience with focused training. There is less promise for microcredentials as a gateway into traditional postsecondary education through progressive stacking.

For this review, HEQCO considers evidence of supply, demand and outcomes to inform institutional planning and government strategy for Ontario's postsecondary education microcredential programming. The review focuses on microcredentials offered by publicly assisted postsecondary institutions while acknowledging the range of other providers operating in this space. It also draws from 16 interviews with representatives from Ontario institutions, research and quality assurance organizations, and governments and institutions from outside of the province.

The findings of HEQCO's 2021 report, 'Making sense of microcredentials' [available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 145.768], are reaffirmed here: these short, focused credentials work best as a complement to postsecondary credentials (e.g. degrees and diplomas). The authors note that even when stacked progressively, microcredentials do not appear to facilitate more equitable postsecondary access than traditional degrees, nor do they achieve the same economic returns. The review's findings also indicate that microcredentials are not well suited to comprehensive reskilling for workers changing industries. Interventions such as wraparound support services or competency-based education programs may be better suited to addressing these types of demands.

The report offers the following recommendations for improving the microcredential strategy in Ontario: (1) Gather evidence: (a) Microcredentials data: by collecting data on supply, demand and outcomes, Ontario institutions and government can ensure microcredential funding is optimized to meet the needs of various groups of learners; and (b) System-level data: tracking student pathways to and through the postsecondary system and labour market would enable government and education providers to explore strategies for serving students at all stages of a lifelong learning journey. This approach may include - but is not limited to - microcredentials; and (2) Offer a transparent strategy focused on upskilling: clear objectives related to microcredentials would help the sector design programs that achieve shared goals and ensure that limited education funds are used most effectively.

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The Sectoral Initiatives Program was designed to improve the availability and use of products that help Canadian labour market stakeholders identify and address emerging labour market issues in their sectors, including: skills requirements; skills mismatches; and labour shortages. The program's mandate is to help sectors identify and develop solutions to address the human resources and labour market needs of their sector. Contributions are provided to funding recipients, who are expected to work with sectoral stakeholders to produce sector-specific labour market information, national occupational standards, skills certification, and training program accreditation products. The products can be used individually or as a continuum to help end-users (for example, employers, job seekers, and learning institutions) understand the sector's labour market needs and to adjust human resources planning and activities accordingly.

This evaluation examined key issues, including: the continued need for the program among target groups; the program's alignment with federal priorities and provincial initiatives; efforts to measure program and project performance; stakeholder engagement; product dissemination and timeliness; contributions toward program outcomes such as awareness and use of products, skills recognition and employability, and addressing sectoral labour market issues; and observations on efforts to deliver the program in a cost efficient manner. Based on the evaluation, recommendations are made to explore ways to encourage funding recipients to strengthen product outreach and dissemination, and to improve performance measurement and increase data validity while minimizing the burden on funding recipients.

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