Enrolments in vocational education and training (VET) care and support qualifications continue to grow however the number of students successfully completing these qualifications varies. Given that care and support workforces are already facing employment shortages, increasing the number of learners who complete qualifications is a key priority.
Against a backdrop of broader research into VET completions, this project will specifically explore the reasons why care and support learners may not be completing qualifications. It could be due to a number of reasons such as life circumstances, relevance or suitability of course components, requiring a set of skills the qualification offers that cannot be gained elsewhere, finding employment and more. We hope to gain insight into the reasons and seek to make recommendations on how these can be addressed.
Issues Paper
During our project set up, we analysed existing literature, previous HumanAbility consultations outcomes and VET data on care and support qualification enrolments and completions to develop an issues paper which identifies some of the areas of concern, emerging themes and potential gaps and areas that we can examine during the next phases of the project. We will use learnings from the issues paper to guide our consultation and whether we focus on one or more care and support sectors. Subsequent findings and recommendations may inform future research into other sectors.
Issues Paper
We would love to hear your thoughts and insights on the Issues Paper, whether you feel there is anything else we should explore, how your organisation is being affected and any steps you have taken to overcome this. We would also like to know if you are interested in participating in our consultation which will commence later this month. Please provide your feedback using the link below.
Feedback Form
VET data dashboard, 2019-2024
This dashboard contains enrolments and completions data for the CHC, HLT and SIS training packages between 2019 and 2024. Users can explore the data at various levels and can analyse and filter data by qualification, student gender, age, state/territory of residence and remoteness, and training provider type.
When changing to a different Provider Type it is best practice to first deselect any Program Name so the Provider Type filter resets. Each visualisation also acts as a filter. For example, if you select 25 to 29 years on the Age visualisation, the other visualisations will only show data for 25 to 29 years.
All data has been sourced directly from the National Centre for Vocational Education and Research and is accessible through the NCVER DataBuilder.
We welcome interested stakeholders, including training providers, peak bodies, employers and unions to share their views, experiences and strategies at our upcoming in-person consultation workshops.
In-person consultation workshops
In person workshops were held in Sydney (03/11), Brisbane (04/11), Melbourne (06/11), Perth (10/11) and Darwin (17/11) 2025.
Online consultations
- Online: Wednesday 26 November 2025, 3 pm - 5 pm AEDT - Booked out
- Online: Thursday 27 November 2025, 2 pm - 4 pm AEDT - Booked out
A report presenting findings from our consultations with over 200 stakeholders (including students, training providers, industry and unions) is now available. Thank you to those who participated in our workshops and interviews.
The consultations surfaced seven key challenges to keeping students engaged through to completion:
- students’ complex needs and capacity levels
- misalignment between expectation and reality of care and support work
- content and difficulty of training material
- motivation to enrol may impact likelihood of completion
- challenges with mandatory work placements
- acute challenges faced by remote and regional stakeholders
- wider systemic barriers.
To respond to these challenges and help drive improvements in completion rates, stakeholders shared many ideas for change, as well as actions they have already taken. These include:
- actively identifying and responding to potential student disengagement
- intentional pre-enrolment screening and information-sharing
- increasing awareness of career pathways arising from qualifications
- enhancing engagement of remote/online students
- thinking creatively about training package delivery
- strengthening and improving the mandatory work placement experience.
Issues Paper 2
We now invite your feedback on the report, as we move to developing recommendations. These recommendations will be presented in a final report, to be released by end-June 2026.
Provide feedback