Our priorities for the regulation of apprenticeships and traineeships in 2025–26
Driving voluntary compliance
We promote compliance campaigns, publicly communicate the findings of them and leverage opportunities to collaborate with co-regulators. To drive voluntary compliance, we will also review communications material to ensure it is fit-for-purpose and accessible to apprentices, trainees and their employers.
New employers
New employers of apprentices and trainees must comply with their obligations to apprentices and trainees. We will conduct risk-based visits to newly approved employers to make sure they understand and are meeting their obligations.
Employers with poor outcomes
Some employers have unusually high numbers of apprentices and trainees not completing qualifications. We will monitor outcome data and check if higher non-completion rates are due to poor quality training or working conditions.
Memorandum of Understanding with WorkSafe Victoria
A new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with WorkSafe Victoria will enable greater information sharing between our organisations. Early notification of incidents at workplaces with apprentices and trainees allows us to take appropriate action to prevent harm to other apprentices and trainees.
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 and 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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