VET News

The NCVER Celebrates 40 Years of Unparalleled Service to the VET Sector

The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) have released a publication which historically represents:

• the story of the NCVER over the past 40 years
• a look at things that have changed and those that have stayed the same, and
• how the NCVER are looking to the future of its support for the VET sector.

Forty years ago, on 2 November 1981, the TAFE National Centre for Research and Development was officially opened.

Early on, the priority was centred on conducting ‘research and development’, including training resources and materials development and working to establish a solid foundation for research in ‘Technical and Further Education’ – an area significantly under-researched at the time compared with general and higher education.

In the early 1990s, the remit of NCVER was expanded significantly to include the oversight and management of the major VET sector administrative, statistical collections as the sector moved towards a more uniform and national approach to data gathering and performance reporting.

By its twentieth anniversary in 2001, the Centre had been renamed the National Centre for Vocational Education Research Ltd.

Now in its fortieth year, NCVER conducts and manage research under a set of national research priorities determined through the Skills Senior Officials Network (SSON), a group comprising of senior Commonwealth and state and territory officials.

As the national VET data custodian, NCVER continues to coordinate the major VET administrative data collections and national surveys; each covers different aspects of VET in Australia, and manage the Australian Vocational Education and Training Management Information Statistical Standard (AVETMISS), and support registered training organisations to report their activity data.

NCVER is building on the successes of the last forty years to ensure it continues to transform and remain highly relevant as the vocational education and training sector moves into a new era of skilling the Australian workforce of the future.

Download NCVER's publication: 40 Years of NCVER 1981-2021 here.

Date posted Nov 11, 2021