Abstract:
Increasing completion rates within trade apprenticeship training has long been the focus of government funding bodies and trade-industry stakeholders. Despite this attention, non-completion rates have remained stubbornly high over the last decade and currently hover in the range of 44-46% in Australia. For many, an apprenticeship is their first experience with the tertiary education system and full-time employment. A failed experience yields a poor first impression in higher learning and employment. The challenge of identifying the factors which predict apprenticeship persistence is complex, multifaceted and, some would suggest idiosyncratic. Notwithstanding, apprentices are hired every day by tradespeople, group training organisations and commercial construction firms. Consequently, this study took a mixed methods approach to uncover how well industry understands the factors underpinning apprenticeship retention. Focus groups were held with employers, group training organisations, industry association managers, and trade teachers to explore their views on factors which influence apprenticeship retention. This informed the content for two separate national surveys completed by apprentices in plumbing (n = 1016) and bricklaying (n = 369). Stepwise binary logistic regression was conducted to develop an occupational model which predicted plumbing apprenticeship persistence. This modelling was cross validated with the separate survey of bricklaying apprentices. Significant factors were identified which predicted the likelihood of apprenticeship persistence for plumbing and bricklaying apprentices. Of the 143 potential factors identified by industry, only 24 were significant as predictors. For example, apprentices who enjoyed working with their hands, the variety of work and had an employer who answered their questions, were positively associated with training persistence. However, there was no association between persistence and apprentices who took up the trade because there was lots of work, to make money while training, family business opportunities, or because they enjoy the people they worked with on-the-job. As a notable addition to previous research on persistence, this study demonstrated that factors associated with persistence can differ between occupations in a related industry. For example, only bricklaying persistence was associated with concerns about the physical nature of the trade, making time for training and family support for their career decision. Apprentices in the plumbing occupation were more likely to persist when they viewed plumbing as a career, a respected trade, and were treated with respect on-the-job. This study highlights that the key to increasing apprenticeship completion rates is likely to be found in factors that are occupation-specific.