Pastoral care within a college setting: customising individual apprenticeship support towards lifting participation and completion rates

This paper reports analysis and discussion on the role of mentoring and pastoral care as mechanisms in lifting apprenticeship participation and completion rates within the Australian framework of apprenticeship training. Australian apprenticeship completion rates have reached historically low levels, with over 47.6 per cent of apprentices leaving their training before completing (NCVER, 2015). As a result, training colleges are customising their support arrangements with the purpose of engaging, supporting and retaining their apprenticeship enrolments. Non-completions have fiscal and social impacts (Lamb & Huo, 2017). It is argued that these impacts can be mitigated through giving apprentices access to mentoring that is inside the trade work but outside their employment relationship. This research study looks at one of Australia's largest training college providers, with a cohort of over 3600 apprentice enrolments (2017) in varying trades. It examines a variety of interventions employed to lift apprenticeship retention numbers, but most specifically, the use of mentoring.

It is envisaged that all apprentices need assistance to negotiate difficulties, build resilience, and learn from issues and complications that arise at some time during the course of their apprenticeship. It is suggested that Trade school is connected to the general work practices of the trade and yet trade school and the trade teachers are also separate from and provide a buffer space for the apprentice from their particular workplace. It is argued that this buffer means that teachers are slightly removed from the particulars of workplace relations but are well placed to gain insight about the generalities that are aggregated from hearing the experiences of a wide range and number of students. This separation from the employment relationship along with a more general commitment to their trade has the potential for the teachers to provide advice and some forms of pastoral care to the apprentices in their trade classes. Especially if this advice and assistance might support an apprentice to navigate difficulties but stay in the trade.

In this paper, some 180 cases are examined and reported on. Important findings from the research show that 87 per cent of students were able to negotiate a significant hurdle with the assistance of individualized pastoral care arrangements. Key areas of interest to the research are: the barriers faced by apprentices; the types and intensity of support they require; the changing role of apprenticeship training colleges; and the contribution of increased pastoral care in the lifting of completion rates.

Published abstract.

The volume from which this paper is taken is available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 131.484. Show less