Education and Skills

Australia’s trajectory as a modern developed nation depends on a highly skilled, educated and innovative population and workforce. Successive state and federal governments have reiterated this as a key outcome for policies relating to education, training and skills and migration policies. BCEC has a dedicated research program that seeks to further understand the skills and education needed to enhance WA’s economic trajectory and inequities that exist in the current education system that prevent Australians from accessing and achieving all they can.

A number of projects are currently underway at the Centre that focus on the WA education sector including understanding the future international demand for tertiary education in Western Australia and estimating the predictors of apprenticeship completions in WA. At a national level, BCEC researchers are assessing issues such as the efficiency of Australian schools, equal access to education, the labour market return of academic fraud, institutional differences in the earnings of higher education graduates and how socio-economic status influences university outcomes.

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2022 Women’s Report Card Alan Duncan, Daniel Kiely, Silvia Salazar The 2022 Women’s Report Card sets out the status and current state of play of women in Western Australia, and in doing so, helps to track progress to achieving better outcomes for women. As is the case to varying degrees... Read article 4 August 2022Research Reports Read More
Parental expectations of children’s higher education participation in Australia Michael Dockery, Paul Koshy, Ian W. Li The role of parental expectations in determining children’s higher education participation is important in understanding both participation and potential policy responses Using a nationally representative longitudinal survey of Australian households, providing repeat observations on expectations for individual children, this study... Read article 5 April 2022Journal Articles Read More
Course non-completion and multiple qualifications: re-estimating the returns to education in Australia Austen Peters, Michael Dockery, Sherry Bawa Among Australian studies estimating returns to education, there is a consensus that education is a highly profitable investment. Conventional estimates of returns to education examine earnings conditional upon individuals’ years of education, with years spent in education typically inferred from... Read article 25 March 2022Journal Articles Read More
Secondary students’ access to careers information: the role of socio-economic background Michael Dockery, Sherry Bawa, Jane Coffey This paper focusses on how careers advice provided to Australian secondary school students varies according to students’ socio-economic background. National data for students in Years 11 and 12 from five cohorts of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth initiated between... Read article 25 August 2021Journal Articles Read More
Bachelor degree participation in vocational institutions: examining the determinants of participation Paul Koshy, Michael Dockery Recent studies in Australia have found that bachelor’s degree participation in vocational institutions in Australia tends to skew towards students from high and middle socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. This outcome runs counter to overall vocational participation which is dominated by... Read article 24 May 2021Journal Articles Read More