“Today’s COAG announcement on moving towards a truly national apprenticeships scheme and shortening the length of 4 year apprenticeships is finally what is needed to break the back of national skill shortage” Jim Barron, CEO of Group Training Australia (GTA) said today.”

GTA is the single largest network employing over 40,000 apprentices and trainees and has long campaigned for greater national leadership in the creation of skills and in the solving of skills shortages.

“For too long, Australia’s vocational education and training and apprenticeships system has been a federated dog’s breakfast, with often 8 different approaches to issues like user choice, school-based New Apprenticeships and the jurisdictional licensing of apprentices, to name but a few.”

“Now, with this commitment to a truly national apprenticeship system, we have a real chance to break down these bureaucratic barriers and move to a national system which will see more efficient competency - based training, greater flexibility in training delivery and the end of time - based apprenticeships.”

“If this concerted drive for a national apprenticeship system can deliver higher quality training in a more timely fashion then Australia will begin to attract higher numbers of school - leavers and also importantly, older workers, into apprenticeships. We will begin to see skills vacancies filled and finally have a long term policy to deal with national skills shortages.”