Australian vocational education and training (VET) data looks at enrolment and completion numbers by gender and field of education.
This includes STEM courses in:
You can use this interactive data to compare VET enrolment and completion numbers for diversity and location groups in STEM, non-STEM and health fields.
You can also look at gender equity within groups. We have included non-binary and gender diverse people in the calculation of proportions and discuss this group in the commentary.
The Power BI dashboards in the monitor present data in different formats, including charts, graphs and tables. You can customise these dashboards based on what you're interested in.
Data is for Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) level courses only. Most VET qualifications in this data range from Certificate I to Advanced Diploma, with a small number of Diploma and Graduate Certificate qualifications also included.
Data is sourced from the NCVER’s VOCSTATS tool. This product applies a perturbation to the figures, which is a proprietary algorithm that makes subtle adjustments to numbers to support deidentifying data without impacting trends.
Counts in the visualisation show numbers of people enrolling in and completing qualifications in a particular calendar year who gave their demographic/diversity information. People can be enrolled in or complete multiple programs within a year. Counts only cover domestic students in onshore locations. This includes Australian citizens, New Zealand citizens, Australian permanent residents and Australian humanitarian visa holders.
Enrolment and completion numbers across years do not represent longitudinal data. Enrolment represents both commencing and continuing activity within the year. Completions are a count of enrolments that concluded in the year, which may have commenced in any of the previous years. They can not be used to calculate completion or attrition rates.
We have included non-binary and gender diverse people in the calculation of proportions in the visualisation and discuss this group in the commentary. This group includes students who report a gender other than male or female.
The calculation of proportions also includes people who do not report their demographic/diversity information on their enrolment form (‘not known’ and ‘not stated’ groups from the source dataset). However, there’s no further analysis on these groups.
Apprenticeships and traineeships are a subset of total enrolments and completions. Students counted as apprentices and trainees have signed a training contract with an employer as part of their VET qualification. Students who are not apprentices or trainees are completing a VET qualification without the need to complete a training contract.
You can view data for apprentices and trainees separately in the visualisation above. Please note the categories (‘Apprentice or trainee’ and ‘Not an apprentice or trainee’) may not sum to the total (‘All’) for completions because the total includes not known.
More information on diversity and location groups is available from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) website.
Read more about our methodology and this data.
In 2024, there were 517,300 VET enrolments in STEM, a decrease of 5% compared to 2023. Of these:
The number of VET STEM enrolments from women decreased by 3,800 or 4% from 2023 to 2024. The number of enrolments from men also decreased, by 21,200 or 5%.
Since 2021, the proportion of STEM enrolments from women has remained stable at 17%. This was higher than 2016, when the proportion of STEM enrolments from women was 14%.
From 2023 to 2024 the number of both men and women who completed VET STEM qualifications increased. The proportion of VET STEM completions from women remained stable at 20%, the same as 2023.
The proportion of enrolments from women in VET information technology and natural and physical sciences qualifications each dropped one percentage point from 2023 to 2024. The proportion of enrolments from women in engineering and related technologies and agriculture, environmental and related studies remained the same as 2023.
Engineering and related technologies consistently had the most enrolments of all STEM fields. However, women continued to be underrepresented, making up only 12% of all enrolments in engineering and related technologies. Of enrolments for apprentices and trainees in this field, 9% were women, compared to 14% for enrolments who were not apprentices and trainees.
Natural and physical sciences had the highest representation for women in all STEM fields (65% of enrolments in 2024 were women). However, it consistently had the lowest number of enrolments of all STEM fields.
Among the broad fields of education, STEM had the lowest proportion of women enrolled in VET training as part of an apprenticeship or traineeship. Women made up 10% of STEM enrolments for apprentices and trainees, compared to 86% of health and 44% of non-STEM enrolments for apprentices and trainees.
First Nations people represented 7% of enrolments in STEM subjects in 2024, compared to 6% for health, and 6% for non-STEM enrolments. This was an increase from 2023, when First Nations people made up 6% of enrolments in STEM qualifications. First Nations people account for 3.2% of the Australian population, according to the 2021 Census.
The number of STEM enrolments from First Nations people increased 3% from 32,600 in 2023 to 33,800 in 2024. There have been large increases in the number of STEM apprentice/trainee enrolments and completions among First Nations people. Since 2015, STEM apprentice and trainee enrolments have more than doubled, and completions increased 77%.
For some groups, there was lower representation in enrolments in STEM subjects compared to the other fields of education.
For people in regional and remote locations, there was higher representation in enrolments in STEM subjects compared to the other fields of education. People in regional and remote locations represented 40% of enrolments in STEM subjects in 2024, compared to 31% for health and 29% for non-STEM enrolments. According to the 2021 Census, 28% of the Australian population lived in regional and remote locations.
Women in some diversity groups were better represented in VET STEM enrolments in 2024:
There was no difference in gender equity of VET STEM enrolments by location. Women made up 17% of STEM enrolments in both regional or remote locations and metropolitan locations.
The dataset shows that for VET enrolments, STEM is less popular among non-binary and gender diverse people, who favour fields other than STEM. In 2024, 20% of enrolments from non-binary and gender diverse people were in STEM fields, compared to 22% of enrolments from all other students. In 2024, there was an increase of non-binary and gender diverse people enrolling in VET courses, up from 6,900 in 2023 to 8,000 in 2024.
| Non-binary and gender diverse people | All other students* | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Field type | no. | % | no. | % |
| STEM | 1,600 | 20% | 515,700 | 22% |
| Health | 700 | 9% | 153,300 | 7% |
| Non-STEM | 5,700 | 71% | 1,632,100 | 71% |
| Total | 8,000 | 100% | 2,301,100 | 100% |
*All other students includes women, men and people who did not report their gender.
Numbers in the table are rounded to the nearest hundred.
