🏆 Australian Call Centre Rankings · Q2 2026
Australian Education Providers Q2 2026 Call Centre Rankings
A prospective student picking a course is choosing between institutions that publish much the same information on much the same websites. What separates them is the phone call — whether anyone picks up, whether they ask what you actually want to do, and whether they tell you what to do next.
These rankings show how Australia’s education providers handle that call, based on real mystery shopping calls from people enquiring about new course options.
These are enrolment calls, and enrolments are revenue. The caller has a shortlist, a deadline and no particular loyalty.
Handle the enquiry well and you have won a student, and often several years of fees with them. Handle it badly and they enrol somewhere else the same week.
Every call is independently assessed against 48+ CX metrics aligned to the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards, covering both how easily the caller reached a person and how well that conversation was handled.
Nobody is told when we are calling, so what you see here is what a prospective student sees.
Q2 2026 gives education providers the largest improvement in customer discovery of any industry we measure — alongside the weakest agents and the weakest call endings in the country. The full picture is below.
What you’re looking at. This is the public snapshot — the headline sector results, and a fraction of what each assessed call generates across 48+ individual metrics. ACXPA Members see considerably more: Provider leaderboards, monthly and quarterly trends, lifetime averages, and provider-level results for a selection of education providers.
But membership is still a view of the sector. It is not a view of you, and it does not open up the full dataset.
The only way to see your own contact centre’s complete results — and to benchmark against the specific competitors you nominate — is through our Education Benchmarking Services.
Australian Education Providers · Q2 2026
Executive Summary
Australian education providers got much better at finding out what a prospective student actually wants — and worse at making them feel like enrolling. Discover rose 12.3 points to 58.0%, the largest single-competency improvement recorded by any sector this quarter, while Impact fell to the sector's lowest figure on record.
Overall CX rose 3.4 points to 55.2%. Every call is scored against a defined standard of best practice, where 100% is a call with nothing missed — so a score in the mid-fifties describes a sector still a long way from what a good enrolment call looks like.
It now sits marginally above the 54.9% all-industry average, which flatters it: the national figure is itself low, and education is still sixth of the seven sectors we measure. Three points up from a weak base is progress, not recovery.
Accessibility averaged 73.4%, third of seven and 7.4 points above the industry average. Getting through to an education provider is not the problem.
What happens next is. Agent Mastery averaged 50.5% — last of all seven sectors, 3.6 points below the national figure, despite a 4.3-point rise. Close averaged 42.3%, also last of seven and 10.1 points below the industry average.
Holmesglen Institute scored 72.6%. The remaining providers averaged 51.7%. No other sector has a single organisation this far ahead of its field.
Holmesglen Institute has now led this sector on Overall CX in every one of the twelve quarters we have tracked it, and on Engage in all twelve. It ranks second nationally across every organisation we assess.
Strip it out and the picture changes sharply. The remaining providers average 51.7% Overall CX and 47.0% Agent Mastery — the latter well below every other sector in the country.
The quarter's improvements are real and worth having. Discover gained 12.3 points and Educate 9.5, the third consecutive rise on course information. Providers explained a course's key features on 86.1% of calls against 63.7% nationally, and pointed callers to the right place online on 60.2% against 30.9%.
But the call has lost its warmth. Impact fell 6.8 points to 56.9%, sixth of seven and the lowest the sector has recorded. Agent energy collapsed from 90.7% to 62.0% against 86.0% nationally, and agents kept control of the call on 43.5% against 61.7%.
The close is worse. Agents thanked the caller for their time on 58.3% of calls — the sector's lowest figure on record, against 82.9% nationally — and checked that everything had been answered on 37.0%.
Answering the phone remains the largest single problem. Only 70.4% of calls were answered — close to three in every ten prospective students never reached a person at all. Each one is an enquiry that ended before a single question could be asked.
Not one provider answered every call this quarter, the only one of the seven sectors we measure where that is true. The best were TAFE NSW and TasTAFE on 88.9%. TAFE Qld answered fewer than half the calls made to it.
Two quarters ago the sector answered 95.4%, so this is not a ceiling education has always lived with. It is a recent slide, it is 12.8 points below the industry average, and it is the most fixable problem in this report.
These are revenue calls. A prospective student comparing course options will ring two or three providers, and the one that gets the enrolment is the one that answers, asks good questions, and ends by inviting them to take the next step.
This quarter the sector got much better at the middle of that sequence and worse at both ends.
ACXPA conducts this benchmarking by posing as prospective students enquiring about new course options. We assess new-business enquiries that represent direct revenue opportunities, not existing-student servicing, and score every call against the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards.
Sector Leaders
🏆 Top Performers — Australian Education Providers Q2 2026
Overall CX — Holmesglen Institute (72.6%)
Holmesglen gained 3.9 points and has now led the sector in all twelve quarters we have tracked Australian education providers — an unbroken record no other organisation in the benchmark holds in its own sector.
It ranks 2nd nationally across every sector we assess and finishes 14.1 points clear of TAFE SA in second.
Agent Mastery — Holmesglen Institute (68.3%)
Agent Mastery assesses how effectively agents Engage (build rapport and take ownership), Discover (establish what the student actually needs), Educate (explain course options, entry requirements and fees clearly), Close (finish with confidence and a clear next step), and create lasting Impact.
Holmesglen rose 6.0 points to 68.3%, 3rd nationally, leading the sector for the eleventh time in twelve quarters.
Its Engage score of 61.1% is 34.2 points above its own sector average and third-highest in the country.
Accessibility — TAFE WA (87.3%)
Accessibility scores the whole journey from dialling to speaking with a person — time in the phone menu, clarity of the options, how long the caller holds, and whether the call is answered at all (full definitions here).
TAFE WA held 87.3%, 7th nationally and a third consecutive quarter leading the sector, reaching a live person in 0:44 with no menu options to navigate at all.
Getting through is where its strength ends: its Agent Mastery of 38.1% and Close of 18.5% are both the lowest recorded by any organisation in the country this quarter.
💛 Impact — TasTAFE (69.4%)
Impact covers how the call felt — the energy the agent brought, whether the caller was heard, whether the agent stayed in control, and whether the answer was expressed clearly enough to act on.
TasTAFE gained 8.3 points to 69.4%, the only provider to improve on a measure that fell across the rest of the sector, and took the lead for the first time.
📈 Most Improved — TAFE SA (58.5%)
TAFE SA gained 12.3 points of Overall CX to finish second in the sector, driven by a 20.2-point rise in Accessibility to 82.0% and calls answered up 22.3 points to 66.7%.
Discover rose 26.0 points to 63.0%, the largest single-competency gain by any provider in the sector, and it recorded the second-fastest phone menu of any organisation in the country at 0:16.
📚 Educate — TAFE Qld (72.2%)
Educate measures whether the caller was given the information they actually needed — course content, entry requirements, timing and fees — clearly enough to act on.
TAFE Qld gained 22.2 points to 72.2%, 8th nationally and a second consecutive rise, with Agent Mastery up 7.6 points.
The catch is that fewer callers than ever reached an agent to hear it: TAFE Qld answered 44.4% of calls, its lowest on record.
What Improved
⭐ Key Wins — Australian Education Providers Q2 2026
🔍 The biggest jump in discovery of any sector this quarter
Discover rose 12.3 points to 58.0% — second of seven sectors, 8.1 points above the national average, and the largest single-competency improvement recorded by any sector in Q2 2026.
TAFE SA gained 26.0 points, TasTAFE 22.3 and TAFE Qld 18.6. Agents held a genuine two-way conversation on 26.9% of calls against 14.7% nationally, and confirmed the caller's need back to them on 51.9% against 38.3%.
📚 Course information got much better
Educate rose 9.5 points to 63.7%, level with the industry average and a third consecutive quarterly improvement.
Providers explained a course's key features on 86.1% of calls against 63.7% nationally, explained the process and next steps on 88.9% against 81.1%, and pointed callers to the right place online on 60.2% against 30.9% — close to double the national rate.
TAFE Qld gained 22.2 points, TAFE WA 16.6 and TasTAFE 15.3.
🚪 Third-easiest sector in the country to reach
Accessibility averaged 73.4%, third of seven sectors and 7.4 points above the 66.0% industry average. Every assessed call reached the right place first time, a sector score of 100.0% against 92.0% nationally.
Menus are short: 1.1 layers against a 2.1 national average, and 0:44 in the menu against 1:12. TAFE WA and TasTAFE present no menu options at all.
TAFE SA recorded the second-fastest phone menu of any organisation in the country at 0:16, and TAFE WA the third-fastest time to a live person at 0:44.
🏅 Holmesglen's record stays perfect
Holmesglen Institute has led the sector on Overall CX and Engage in all twelve quarters, and on Agent Mastery in eleven of twelve.
This quarter it placed 2nd nationally on Overall CX and 3rd on Agent Mastery, Engage, Discover and Educate. It also cut its talk time by more than three minutes to 6:26 and its total experience time to a best-ever 7:32.
🚀 TAFE SA and TasTAFE both climb hard
TAFE SA gained 12.3 points of Overall CX, 20.2 of Accessibility and 26.0 of Discover, and lifted calls answered 22.3 points.
TasTAFE gained 9.8 points of Overall CX and 12.6 of Agent Mastery, with Discover up 22.3, Educate up 15.3, Close up 13.0 and Impact up 8.3. It halved its average wait from 1:30 to 0:45.
✅ Not a single quality deduction
No provider incurred a quality deduction on any assessed call — a sector rate of 0.0% against a 1.8% industry average, and a second consecutive quarter with none.
There were no audio problems of any kind recorded across the sector.
Where The Sector Is Losing Ground
⚠ Overall CX Challenges — Australian Education Providers Q2 2026
🎓 The least skilled agents of any sector in the country
Agent Mastery is everything that happens once the caller gets through: how the agent greets them, what they ask, how clearly they explain the options, and whether they invite the caller to take a next step.
Education averaged 50.5% — last of all seven sectors and 3.6 points below the national average, even after a 4.3-point rise. Getting through to these providers is easy. It is the conversation itself that loses the enrolment.
The sector average flatters it. Holmesglen scored 68.3%; the remaining providers averaged 47.0%, which would be the weakest figure of any sector by a clear margin. One institution is holding the sector’s number up.
TAFE WA's 38.1% is the lowest Agent Mastery result recorded by any organisation in any sector this quarter, and its Close of 18.5% is the lowest nationally too — callers who do get through are rarely invited to take a next step.
👋 The worst close in the country
Close averaged 42.3% — last of all seven sectors and 10.1 points below the industry average.
Agents thanked the caller for their time on 58.3% of calls, the sector's lowest figure on record, against 82.9% nationally. They checked that everything had been answered on 37.0% against 44.6%.
On an enrolment enquiry, that final check is the invitation to take the next step. TAFE WA (18.5%), TasTAFE (31.5%) and TAFE NSW (37.0%, a worst-ever) are all near the bottom of the national table.
📉 The call has lost its warmth
Impact fell 6.8 points to 56.9%, sixth of seven sectors, 13.8 points below the national average and the lowest the sector has recorded — a second consecutive quarterly decline.
The drop is almost entirely one behaviour: agent energy fell from 90.7% to 62.0%, against 86.0% nationally. Control of the call sits at 43.5% against 61.7%, clarity at 60.2% against 66.1%, and empathy at 62.0% against 69.0%.
Holmesglen, TAFE NSW and TAFE WA all recorded their worst-ever Impact scores — including the sector leader.
📵 Three callers in ten still don't get through
Calls answered recovered 7.4 points to 70.4%, but remain sixth of seven sectors and 12.8 points below the 83.2% industry average.
The collapse is recent: the sector answered 95.4% of calls two quarters ago. It has lost 25.0 points since.
TAFE Qld answered 44.4%, a worst-ever result, and Holmesglen, TAFE SA and TAFE WA all sat at 66.7%. Only TAFE NSW and TasTAFE cleared 80%.
🔻 TAFE Qld becomes the hardest provider to reach
TAFE Qld lost 24.3 points of Accessibility to 45.6%, a third consecutive quarterly decline, taking it to 42nd of the organisations we assess nationally.
Average wait time rose from 1:07 to 4:40, time to reach a person from 2:14 to 5:47, and total experience time to a worst-ever 13:05 — the longest in the sector by more than four minutes.
Its conversation improved markedly at the same time, with Educate up 22.2 points. Fewer callers than ever were around to benefit.
🏷 Fee disclosure went backwards
Pricing was revealed on 49.1% of calls, down 11.1 points and 14.2 points below the 63.3% national average.
TAFE NSW and TasTAFE both revealed pricing on 22.2% of calls. On an enquiry where course fees are usually the deciding factor, that is the number the caller rang for.
🤝 The opening is still thin outside Holmesglen
Engage averaged 26.9%, fifth of seven and 6.5 points below the national average, barely moved on the quarter.
Holmesglen scored 61.1%. No other provider reached 37%, and TAFE WA managed 11.1%. Agents gave their name on 16.7% of calls across the sector, against 31.6% nationally.
Recognising Call Centre Excellence for Australian Education Providers
Congratulations to the Australian education providers delivering standout customer experiences through their contact centres in Q2 2026 — a quarter in which this sector recorded the largest improvement in customer discovery of any industry we measure.
These rankings are based on independent mystery shopping assessments, using real enquiries from prospective students exploring new course options to evaluate how well providers handle the call that decides an enrolment.
Recognition here reflects more than meeting expectations. A prospective student will ring two or three providers in an afternoon and enrol with one of them. The providers at the top of this table are converting enquiries the rest of the sector is losing between the hold queue and the goodbye.
72.6% 58.5% 54.9% 39.9%Quarterly Trend
Overall CX
Australian Education Providers
The Overall CX Score is the headline metric in our benchmarking program — a single weighted score covering how easily a customer reaches a contact centre, and how well the conversation goes once they do.
The two are weighted deliberately. Getting through matters, but what happens next matters more — so the agent's handling of the conversation carries the greater share of the score.
Penalties are applied where a call breaks down badly, so a serious failure can't be averaged away by an otherwise reasonable interaction. The score reflects what the customer actually experienced.
Learn more about the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards that power these assessments.
Key Metrics Trend – Australian Education Providers (12-Month View)
The chart below highlights a 12-month trend across three core CX performance metrics for Australian education providers:
- Overall CX – A weighted composite score reflecting the full enquiry experience, combining how easily the student reached an agent with how well that conversation was handled.
- Accessibility – How quickly and easily a prospective student can reach a real person to discuss course options or entry requirements, measured across menu navigation, wait times, recorded messaging and whether the call is answered at all.
- Agent Mastery – The skill, clarity and confidence with which agents establish what the student is trying to achieve, explain course options, entry requirements and fees, and progress toward an enrolment, measured across five core competencies.
- Overall CX
- This is the headline metric – representing the total customer experience across every stage of the call journey. It's calculated using a weighted combination of the Accessibility and Agent Mastery scores, providing a holistic view of how well education providers are delivering end-to-end experiences during revenue-intent enquiries such as new course options and enrolments.
- Accessibility
- This measures how easily and quickly a prospective student can reach a real person. It includes navigating phone menus, clarity of options, queue times, and whether callers successfully reach an agent. Higher scores indicate faster access, lower friction and fewer abandoned enquiries. A call counts as answered if it reaches a person within ten minutes.
- Agent Mastery
- This evaluates the quality and professionalism of the conversation once contact is made. It measures how effectively agents establish what the student wants to achieve, explain course content, entry requirements, study modes, timing and fees, handle objections, and guide the caller toward enrolment – along with empathy, clarity and overall service delivery. On a decision the caller will live with for years, it is a direct measure of whether they were given enough to choose.
Learn more about the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards that underpin these assessments.
Call Centre CX Quadrant – Australian Education Providers Q2 2026
This Call Centre CX Quadrant plots how Australian education providers compare on Accessibility — how quickly and easily a prospective student reaches a live agent — against Agent Mastery, the quality, clarity and confidence of the conversation that follows.
The mystery shops are revenue-intent enquiries: a prospective student comparing course options before enrolling.
Q2 2026 leaves only two providers in the top-right box. Five of the six are easy to reach, but three of those five fall below the midpoint on the conversation itself — a higher share than any other sector we assess this quarter.
Holmesglen Institute sits furthest right on conversation quality by a wide margin, with TasTAFE the only other provider above the line. TAFE WA is highest of all on access and furthest left on quality — the easiest provider in the sector to reach, and the least skilled once you do.
TAFE Qld is alone on the hard-to-reach side after losing 24.3 points of access, and is the only provider there despite improving its conversation this quarter.
The chart's shape is the sector's problem in one picture. Education is the third-easiest industry in the country to phone and the weakest on Agent Mastery. Nobody is being kept out; they are being let in and then let down.
