NSW VET in school enrolments fall further amid national skills shortage

Schools are being urged to stop pressuring students into university degrees and instead get a head start on a skill or trade. See why “the sky’s the limit” for VET students.

Schools are being urged to stop pressuring students into university degrees and instead get a head start on a skill or trade, as new figures reveal another drop in the number of vocational education students in NSW despite the nation’s acute shortage of skilled tradespeople.

The latest figures from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research show fewer than one in five 15 to 19-year-olds in NSW participated in a VET course at school in 2022, falling 3.1 per cent since 2021 and 3.2 per cent over the last five years.

Just 2,600 students took up a school-based apprenticeship or traineeship last year, but more than 40,000 Year 12s applied for university study.

Inner West builder Tom Quilty said clever kids from middle class backgrounds should be more supported to take up a trade apprenticeship instead of a university HECS debt.

“Once you get through the pain of the four years (as an apprentice), you can earn just as much as doctors and lawyers,” the 35-year-old small business owner said.

17-year-old apprentice carpenter Nitin Gurung is one of only 2600 school-based apprentices in NSW. Picture: John Appleyard

“In the long run, you come out debt free and qualified … the sky’s the limit in regards to revenue,” he said.

His own site foreman, 28-year-old James Sheather, spent three years undertaking a Bachelor of Business in supply chain management after high school only to realise he “wasn’t suited to an office job” and needed to take up a TAFE course instead.

Nitin’s boss, Tom Quilty, has seen first-hand how pressure on teenagers to attend university can set them back several years. Picture: John Appleyard

“All my mates did trades coming out of school. I was going to uni thinking ‘it’s better doing it this way’, you definitely feel like it’s the smarter and better option … but it cost me,” he said.

Electricians, motor mechanics and gardeners are among the trades in highest demand, and of the seven occupations defined by Jobs and Skills Australia as having few applicants per vacancy, more than half require Certificate IV or III VET qualifications.

While new grad paralegals can start out on $70,000 but end up with a $75,700 debt, entry-level electricians earn $76,050 on average without paying a cent on TAFE tuition.

Apprenticeship Employment Network executive director Gary Workman said schools need more stronger industry and employer partnerships and greater consistency across the state to make sure students get a real chance to try a trade before committing to years at uni undertaking a degree they might never use.

“Schools measure success … upon their university rankings, their entrance scores. Why aren’t secondary schools measuring other forms of success for young people,” he said.

VET is being offered in 146 of the 163 secondary Catholic schools in the state, with 28 per cent of students undertaking at least one course, and the Independent sector has more than 6,700 VET students in 130 schools, accounting for approximately 24 per cent of students.

Thirty-three per cent of public school Year 11 and 12s undertook VET last year while 32 schools did not participate - many of them academically selective.

Mr Quilty’s 17-year-old carpentry apprentice Nitin Gurung is learning his trade through his school, Southern Cross Catholic College in Burwood, but said many of his peers have dropped out.

“You get a taste of the trade, and I think it’s the better way to start off than just going headfirst into some TAFE course and finding out you don’t like it at all,” he said.

“We started with 25 people and now there’s 10 people … maybe it’s too hard for some of them. People want to make big money but they don’t want to work hard for it.

“It’s the environment too … If you don’t really have good mentors or good people around you, it just makes it twice as hard.”

Dallas McInerney, CEO of Catholic Schools NSW, said “statewide co-ordination” and “up to date” relationships with industry are crucial to the enrolment and graduation rates in his sector, but denied any need to channel students away from university.

“The delineation between a VET or university pathway is becoming less distinct … we have kids going with an ATAR, seeking university entrance who already have a Cert I or a Cert II,” he said.

“That blending is where the future will be.”