NCVER, and UNESCO-UNEVOC, together with the Korean Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training (KRIVET), and the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, are currently undertaking a collaborative research project to identify and highlight key issues in the measurement of the return on investment (ROI) in technical and vocational education and training (TVET). Funding and financing are very important issues and understanding how stakeholders – from individuals, to enterprises, through to economies and societies – benefit is essential to understand better TVET systems and policies.

Initiated as a collaborative research project supported by UNESCO-UNEVOC, the research aims to identify the nature of private and public economic benefits from investment in training, and understand how TVET can potentially contribute to wider social benefits including social inclusion, crime reduction and general health and wellbeing. In particular, the research will focus on:

• appropriate definitions and indicators needed to measure ROI from multiple dimensions and stakeholders;
• methodologies for measuring investment in TVET from existing international studies;
• pertinent timelines for measuring ROI

An inception meeting will take place in April where the involved parties will discuss the project further, and a virtual conference organized on UNESCO-UNEVOC’s TVeT Forum is also being planned for May, providing an opportunity for the wider TVET community to provide feedback.

One of the envisaged outcomes of the collaborative research project is a ROI framework which includes a set of meaningful indicators and measures so that it is applicable to countries worldwide. To ensure the validity and applicability of the framework, several countries in Asia and the Pacific through the UNEVOC network will be involved in testing the framework.

For more information, please see the article published in NCVER’s Insight Newsletter Issue 57.