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The Gen Green 3 study, a partnership between La Trobe University and WorldSkills Australia captured apprentices' and trainees' experiences of skills and sustainability in workplaces and courses in 2012, building on the Gen Green 2008 and 2010 surveys. The research indicated a step change in apprentices' and trainees' experience of skills for sustainability in work and training between 2008 and 2010, but only minor changes in the experience of these skills at work and in training from 2010 to 2013. Cost was consistently indicated as the most widely experienced barrier to practicing these skills at work and the main driver for gaining these skills was a personal interesting sustainability, an interest that remained consistently high over the three surveys.

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This paper provides insight into the attitudes and perceptions of young people who are studying, or who are recent graduates of [vocational education and training] VET programs to identify and discuss issues and trends emerging from research into the development of 'skills for sustainability'. Located in the wake of the implementation of the Green Skills Agreement (Council of Australian Governments 2010), this paper brings together findings from recent research undertaken separately by these two researchers. The study by Sack (2012) was conducted under the auspices of the Dusseldorp Skills Forum and involves review and analysis of the 2008 and 2011 Gen Green surveys of Australian WorldSkills competitors. These two surveys have been analysed separately and more recently together, to provide a longitudinal snapshot of the issues and trends as depicted by young people in VET. The 2011 survey shows that some important environmental, social and economic skills are largely absent from courses and workplaces, suggesting scope for a broader revision of public policy around skills for sustainability in the future. Following a key finding from these two surveys that recognises technical and further education (TAFE) as the main source of learning about sustainability skills, this paper includes a slice drawn through the data in a recent study by Brown (2012) involving semi-structured interviews with 19 TAFE students located in three different TAFE institutes and one recent VET graduate. While far from universal, these TAFE students reported changes being implemented into both their work roles and their courses of study.

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The implementation of the Green Skills Agreement ratified by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in 2010 provides the national policy context for this analysis of skills for sustainability. Data from three different but complementary studies provide powerful insight into the attitudes and perceptions of young people who are studying, or are recent graduates of, Australian Vocational Education and Training (VET) programs. [The authors] argue that the voices of the young people who participate as students are largely absent from analysis and policy-making, despite policy rhetoric about a demand driven Australian tertiary education sector responsive to consumer (student) interest and need. The combination of these three studies contributes to an improved understanding of what these young adults think and are learning with regard to skills for sustainability in their VET courses and in their workplaces.

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[Vocational education and training] VET students and their teachers have unique insights into the supply of demand for skills for sustainability, and this viewpoint can contribute, now and in to the future, to the further development of skills for sustainability in Australia. In this research skills for sustainability are broadly conceived as including skills for social, economic and environmental sustainability - a triple bottom line approach. The study provides evidence on the actual depth and breadth of the take-up of these skills within Australian training organisations and workplaces.

In summary, the results show that: apprentices, trainees and their teachers cared a great deal about soil, economic and environmental sustainability; supply was closely aligned to social demand for skills for sustainability so that demand for skills for sustainability from VET students was almost entirely met; there are important differences in the teaching, learning and utilisation of skills for sustainability that are related to gender and age; and in-class learning of environmental skills has increased over time and now slightly outweighs learning of these skills at work, however community learning of these skills outweighs both.

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This paper provides a brief overview to the results of the suite of Gen Green bi-annual surveys that were conducted in 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014. These surveys looked at the skill formation and utilisation of Australian apprentices and trainees with the period under study coinciding with the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainability (DESD). The major strategy for development [of] Education for Sustainable Development in the Australian [vocational education and training] VET sector was the Green Skills Agreement that was implemented in 2010. Consequently, the findings of these surveys stand as an evaluative indicator of the skill formation and utilisation of skills for sustainability during this period of intense federal, state and enterprise-based investment in skills for sustainability. These studies conclude that there has been a high and is high demand for skills for sustainability from apprentices and trainees and their workplaces and that most of this demand is being met.

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