Federal budget 2023: Free course deal to whet the appetite for work

More free TAFE courses, catch-up literacy lessons and women-only apprenticeships will be offered through a $3.7bn shot in the arm for workforce training.

Federal Skills and Training Minister Brendan O’Connor says the lack of skilled workers was ‘one of our greatest economic challenges in decades’. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Philip Gostelow

More free TAFE courses, catch-up literacy lessons and women-only apprenticeships will be offered through a $3.7bn shot in the arm for workforce training.

The budget will boost federal spending on vocational education and training to $12.8bn over five years, subject to a new National Skills Agreement with state and territory governments to be in place by January.

Free training has already been delivered to 180,000 Australians this year under federal-state funding deals for free courses in Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges. The extra funding will provide free courses for 400,000 more school leavers and workers seeking to retrain and switch careers.

A new gender equality target will double the proportion of girls and young women in apprenticeships and traineeships, working on major commonwealth-funded construction projects.

Under the Australian Skills Guarantee, one in 10 workers on government-funded construction projects costing more than $10m must be an apprentice, trainee or cadet. Some of the jobs will be reserved for women, to double the share of women training in government-funded construction jobs over the next seven years. It aims to triple the participation of women in trade apprenticeships, such as carpentry and plumbing, by the end of the decade.

It will spend $436m over the next four years to improve adults’ “foundation skills’’ of reading, writing and maths – required to remedy failures in the schooling system, and help new migrants overcome language difficulties.

Workers struggling with basic skills will be given access to free remedial lessons previously reserved for the unemployed.

Federal Skills and Training Minister Brendan O’Connor said the lack of skilled workers was “one of our greatest economic challenges in decades’’. “One in five Australian adults lack core literacy, numeracy and digital literacy skills, which limits their ability to participate fully in training and secure work,’’ he said. “We’re expanding access to foundational skills so that all Australians aged over 15 can develop the language, numeracy, and digital skills that they need.’’

It will extend funding for another eight months for pilot programs with free and fast-tracked skills assessments for new migrants. And $54.3m will be spent to reduce the 50 per cent dropout rate for apprenticeships.