One day the estimable NCVER will have good news for VET – but it isn’t today

The September 2020 apprentice and trainee stats are out – they aren’t great but it is hard to tell how bad they are, compared to the last pandemic.  The National Centre for Vocational Education Research was not collecting data in 1919.

However, they are certainly down year and year – and continue the declining trend in-place for the five years recorded in the new report.

September quarter commencements in 2020 were 23 per cent down on third quarter ’19, with overall in-training numbers 4 per cent lower. The year on year drop was nearly 19 per cent. But this is not new, continuing a trend in-place long before COVID-19. Commencements for the year to September last were down 25 per cent on 2016, completions were 22 per cent lower and total in-training numbers were 4.8 per cent under September ’16.