School completion targets and the ‘equivalence’ of VET in the Australian context

Abstract

Located differentially (and to its detriment) within a status hierarchy of knowledge, vocational education has been called upon to satisfy an increasing range of political and social needs, including meeting the needs of industry and government and catering for increasing pupil diversity. Faced with stubbornly immobile rates of school completion in Australia, policy makers have turned to vocational education and training to play a part in achieving higher rates of school completion or its ‘equivalent’. This has been principally in the form of proposing alternative qualifications to the existing senior school certificates and increasing the role played by adult vocational education and training (VET) providers. This article considers the contribution of these various policy initiatives to progress in achieving school completion targets—focusing on current approaches to provision of vocational programmes (both in schools and in other providers), the equivalence of qualifications and the relative strength of non‐school pathways. It questions the integrity of these ‘alternative’ measures of school completion and challenges the notion that VET, delivered within a secondary school subject paradigm, can produce the gains in participation required to reach these targets.