This strategic review has 5 key focus areas, including how well it’s performing in helping the take-up and completion of apprenticeships, how the apprenticeship system can best support high-quality apprenticeships and how well it’s encouraging apprenticeship take up by women, First Nations people, people with disability and those in regional, rural and remote communities.
State and territory governments have a key role in the apprenticeship system through the regulation of apprenticeships under state and territory legislation. And that makes the system quite complex. There have also been a range of review of apprenticeships at the state level across Australia over the years.
Doing an apprenticeship
A young person’s decision to undertake an apprenticeship is subject to a range of social influences. These include a parent‘s area of study, line of work and views on desirable post-secondary pathways. They all have a significant influence on what pathway a young person will choose. If parents place more value on university pathways, they are more likely to discuss them with their children. Perceptions also vary by socioeconomic status. One study showed that young people in the lowest quartile of socioeconomic status were 4 times more likely to want to be technicians and trade workers than those in the highest quartile of socioeconomic status.
The background paper points out that:
“Apprenticeships are an important pathway for many Australians to gain the skills and qualifications required for secure, long-term employment’ [and] “Since the 1960s, the Australian Government has provided a range of financial incentives and non-financial incentives and support for apprentices and employers. Currently, the Australian Apprenticeships Incentive System is the Australian Government’s primary financial assistance program providing incentives to both apprentices and employers, at around $1.1 billion per year in 2022–23 and 2023–24.”
Apprenticeships can also be highly gendered (men dominate trade occupations like electricians, bricklayers, carpenters and joiners, while women are concentrated in occupations such as child carers, general clerks, sales assistants and personal carers) but that’s a thing where there is a desire to change. The paper also highlights a number of the uncertainties women face, including “risk of income loss and skill depreciation, and missed opportunities for skills formation or consolidation.”
What’s happening with the numbers?
Commencements have declined. As the paper points out, “between 2012 and 2019, annual apprentice commencements to 31 December fell by around 54%, from approximately
331,000 to 151,000.” Research also shows the reduction in commencements is primarily due to a sharp decline in non-trade apprenticeships, while trade commencements have remained steady.
Looking at completion rates is also important. Overall trades completion rates sit at 53.4%, but some areas are higher or lower than others. Higher ones include engineering, ICT and science technicians, while lower ones are food trades workers. In terms of non-trades workers, completion rates sit at around 58%. The high completions are amongst carers and aides (68.7%), while hospitality workers sit at around 49.8%. However, as the paper suggests:
“lifting completion rates will substantially contribute to meeting Australia’s skills needs. Understanding what has contributed to the decline in the completion rate is important in identifying how the apprenticeships system can better support apprentice completions. However, in some occupations, lack of completion of a formal qualification does not prevent people from working in the industry.”
Variations in completion rates
Completion rates vary by demographic group. This is what the data tell us:
- Women have higher completion rates than males
- Men in male dominated trades have higher completions than females in male dominated trades
- Completion rates are higher for those without a disability than those with one
- Completion rates are higher for those in regional or remote areas than in cities
- Completion rates are higher for those who are not culturally or linguistically diverse rather than those who are.
Barriers to completion
“Identifying the specific factors that impact on non-completion is complex because many of the issues cited by apprentices (such as working conditions, pay, alternative job offers, personal reasons and career changes) interact with one another. Apprentices usually have more than one reason for not completing, so a multifaceted approach is needed to improve completions. No single solution will provide a complete solution.” However, “about 80% of cancellations are initiated by the apprentice and they commonly give reasons relating to the employment experience,” so it’s not so much about the quality of training and the training experience delivered by RTOs as about what happens in the workplace itself.
The aggregate costs of non-completion are significant. Completion matters because there are significant costs associated with non-completion as “apprentices may become unemployed or receive a lower wage than if they had completed their training; employers will have spent resources in supervising the apprentice and paying training costs (including time the apprentice spent at off-the-job training) and governments will have subsidised training, provided employer incentives and incurred administrative costs.”
Finally, the paper suggests that some level of non-completion is to be expected. This is because “some apprentices change their minds about their career goals. Others may choose not to complete due to a change in their personal circumstances or if they feel they have gained the skills they need to transition to full-time employment.”
What’s important, though, is increasing both apprenticeship take up and completion rates.
