Poor literacy and numeracy threatening electrical apprenticeships

Australia’s vocation education and training (VET) system is having to compensate for stagnant literacy and numeracy standards in Year 12 students, E-Oz Energy Skills Australia has warned.

The latest findings of a COAG Reform Council report show that literacy and numeracy standards for Year 12s are stagnating, E-Oz says, which means the VET system is forced to spend time on teaching basic skills that should have been learnt at school, making it harder to produce quality electrical apprentices.

As part of its new pilot program for electrical apprenticeships, E-Oz has been facilitating a Readiness Assessment (RA) exam, which tests electrical apprenticeship candidates for literacy and numeracy. The RA shows that more than half of all electrical apprenticeship candidates struggle with literacy or numeracy, which threatens their ability to complete an apprenticeship.

“When over half those who want to become the electricians of the future lack the basic literacy and numeracy required to get them there, we have a serious problem,” E-Oz Energy Skills Australia Chair Bernard Van Den Bergen said.

“At a time when demand for electricians is exploding, we will struggle to keep up unless we get more capable students coming out of our secondary school system.

“COAG’s educational goals seem completely out of step with what is possible on current trends. If they want the proportion of Australians holding a Certificate III qualification or higher to increase from 60 to 80%, then the VET sector will need to take a lot of this burden.

“But the average levels of literacy and numeracy are currently nowhere near good enough for enough Australian students to succeed in modern trades, especially not in the complex electrical sector. Our VET sector is spending far too much time re-teaching basic skills, which should have been learnt in school.

“Nearly half of those who currently start an electrical apprenticeship have been dropping out, and most of those are doing so because they find it too challenging.

“E-Oz Energy Skills Australia is trying to address that through our new apprenticeship pilot - including a Readiness Assessment exam - to test for literacy and numeracy. But if over half the students sitting the Readiness Assessment are not able to pass, then the situation is unsustainable in the long term.”