Our priorities for the regulation of apprenticeships and traineeships in 2024
Women building and construction apprentices
The traditionally male-dominated industry is seeing growth in female participation. We’ll check that women apprentices are given skilled work and quality training.
Labour hire organisations (LHOs)
Apprentices and trainees employed by LHOs are at greater risk of exploitation and mistreatment. Our Authorised Officers will visit these workplaces.
Employer training plan compliance
A campaign to ensure apprentices and trainees learn the skills and competencies set out in their training plan and are released from the workplace to attend their registered training organisation.
Ban on engineered stone
From 1 July 2024, the use, manufacturing, supply, processing and installation of engineered stone will be banned in Australia. We’ll go into Victorian workplaces to ensure apprentices are not exposed to silica dust from engineered stone.
Enduring priorities
There are some harms so detrimental to apprentices and trainees that the VRQA will always regard them as a priority. These are identified in our Apprenticeships and traineeships compliance and enforcement framework as:
- Injury or death
- Poor quality workplace experiences
- Exploitation and mistreatment
- Insufficient learning and progress
Approach and principles underlying our priorities
Each year we review our compliance and enforcement priorities. Priorities are determined following examination of data (complaints and investigations), external consultation and an assessment of existing or emerging issues impacting apprentices and trainees.
We publish these priorities to help notify the public of where we plan to deploy Authorised Officers in the field. The principles in our Regulatory approach statement underly the identification of annual priorities. They are:
- Transparency
- Proportionality
- Consistency and predictability
- Sector neutrality
- Efficiency and agility
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