42689 (2025). Shanan Halbert to the Minister for Vocational Education

42689 (2025). Shanan Halbert to the Minister for Vocational Education: How many individuals dropped out of an apprenticeship in 2024?

Hon Penny Simmonds: I am advised that the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) does not have a standard measure for learner dropout. But TEC does provide the cohort-based programme completion rates as an alternative to any data related to dropouts or withdrawals. While TEC does receive information on when an apprentice withdraws from their training programme, due to the nature of industry-based learning, it is common for an apprentice to withdraw from training for periods of time and re-start later for a variety of reasons. Therefore, the number of reported withdrawals each year does not directly relate to the number of apprentices who drop out of apprenticeship training. The 2024 cohort-based programme completion rate Educational Performance Indicator (EPI) for apprenticeships was 44%. The 2024 cohort-based programme completion rate EPI relates to learners who started their apprenticeship in 2019 and completed between 2019 and 2024. The 2024 cohort-based programme completion rate EPI will be affected by Tertiary Education Organisations (TEOs) mergers and Industry Training Organisation transitions. These will result in lower than usual cohort-based programme completion rates and do not necessarily reflect the true performance of the TEO and the overall industry training performance measures.