This study explores the views of 6492 NSW primary and secondary school students’ post-school aspirations. It explores when VET begins to feature in students’ thinking about their futures, the kinds of students who think about VET, and under what conditions.

This research, which aims to enhance understanding of student choice and entitlements to training from the students’ perspective, has collected and analysed data from over 150 students in Victoria on how they make their VET choices and contrasted this with the existing literature on choice and VET measures of choice.

This research investigates the incidence of being persistently NEET among those aged 15–24, the socio-demographic characteristics associated with the NEET state, and the outcomes at ages 20–24 for those who had one or more periods of being persistently NEET from ages 15 through to 19, as compared to their not persistently NEET counterparts.

This summary highlights key findings from research which examined different aspects of employer-supported training. It also touches on related work which examines employer perspectives of workforce training and work which evaluates training funded through the National Workforce Development Fund (NWDF) program.

This working paper is the first publication from a project looking at the role of vocational education and training (VET) in supporting the growing need for digital skills in the Australian workforce.