Australian vocational education and training statistics: trends in ‘traditional apprenticeships’

The data submitted to the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) by states and territories does not separately distinguish apprentices from trainees. However, many policy-makers and researchers are interested in segmenting the apprentice and trainee population into two groups. In this publication, other information is used to develop a proxy indicator of ‘traditional apprentices’. The ‘traditional apprentice’ for the purposes of this study, is a person who is employed under a contract of training in a trades occupation, training towards a qualification at Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) level III or higher, and the portrait of ‘traditional apprenticeships’ provided here is, broadly, one of constancy over the past six years. The overall portrait of apprenticeships and traineeships, in contrast, shows a lot of change. Numbers have more than doubled, and there are now far higher proportions of women and older workers undertaking apprenticeships and traineeships. The study suggests that ‘traditional apprenticeship’ remains very much a major pathway for young men making the transition from school to work: more than three in four of all teenagers employed in the trades in 2002 were undertaking a ‘traditional apprenticeship’, an increase from approximately two in three in 1996. The study also discovered that four in five traditional apprentices are employed by companies in the private sector, but a growing proportion, close to one in five, is employed through group training companies. What the past six years illustrates most of all is that the underlying concept of an apprenticeship, ‘structured learning in a work-based environment’, has made a successful transition and is now well established outside the trades. Show less