TAFE used to be good when it was free but Howard stuffed it up when he decreed that TAFE had to make a profit. The quality of apprentices deteriorated dramatically when fees were introduced.
In fact, TAFE instructors were very lenient on female apprentices compared to male apprentices.
The apprentices that ended working in government entities of larger private companies like BHP won the jackpot! They were exposed to more variety of work compared to an apprentice working for company that just repaired welders etc.
The other contributing factor for lack of tradies was the privatisation of government entities. Once it fell into private hands, training of apprentices was seen simply as a financial burden to be passed on to some else..
Previously government entities gave the theoretically and manual training of apprentices and acted like the feeder to disperse apprentices to the private sector .
