Inclusive Education

BETTER school and vocational training completions will do much more to improve social inclusion than achievement of the Bradley higher education targets, a new study reveals.

The National Centre for Vocational Education Research report, released yesterday, finds that low education levels are a “powerful marker” of social exclusion.

It finds the “biggest pay-off” for the social inclusion agenda will come from efforts to ramp up qualifications at year 12 and apprenticeship level.

Slashing the number of people without basic tertiary qualifications – in line with the Council of Australian Governments target to halve the proportion of adults without at least a certificate III – could reduce the incidence of social exclusion by 30 per cent, the modelling reveals.

By comparison, increasing the proportion of people with degrees – in line with the Bradley target of 40 per cent higher education attainment, for example – would have a “much more modest” impact on social inclusion.

The study applies a modern view of social exclusion that goes “beyond the standard poverty lines approach”.

“In the 90s they [realised] it’s not just income. It’s education, it’s health, it’s interacting with your neighbours, it’s feeling safe in the community,” co-author Hielke Buddelmeyer says in an NCVER podcast.

The researchers created a measure of social exclusion based on seven components: material resources, employment, education and skills, health and disability, social factors, community factors and personal safety.

But education is a “sleeper factor” which influences the other six, as well as contributing to social exclusion in its own right.

Dr Buddelmeyer says people with higher education levels are more likely to be healthy and employed on a good income, and they tend to live in nicer neighbourhoods with less crime and more interaction with their neighbours.

“If you work on education as a channel, you can really make a big inroad in reducing rates of social exclusion,” he says.

But he says the “big gains” in social inclusion aren’t achieved by helping people who’ve completed year 12 to obtain bachelors degrees. “At the lower end [of the education spectrum] there’s still that much space to improve on,” he says.

The study finds the “real dichotomy” in social exclusion lies between those who haven’t completed school or achieved certificate III level qualifications, and everybody else. Between 2001 and 2008, social exclusion flat-lined or rose slightly for the former group, while it declined steadily for more educated groups.

However all groups experienced increased social exclusion in 2008, at the time of the global financial crisis.

The modelling finds social exclusion declines as people move up the qualifications ladder, with degree-qualified people excluded at less than half the average rate. But exclusion rates among people without high school or basic vocational qualifications are almost double the average.

The study uses data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ survey of education and training.

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