Journal of Vocational Education and Training

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Theory and practice: the contribution of off-the-

job training to the development of apprentices
and trainees

Erica Smith

To cite this article: Erica Smith (2002) Theory and practice: the contribution of off-the-job training
to the development of apprentices and trainees, Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 54:3,
431-456, DOI: 10.1080/13636820200200208

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820200200208

Published online: 19 Dec 2006.

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Journal of Vocational Education and Training, Volume 54, Number 3, 2002

Theory and Practice: the

contribution of off-the-job training to the
development of apprentices and trainees

ERICA SMITH
Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia

ABSTRACT This article uses the findings from a qualitative study of

Australian young people in their first year of full-time work to examine the
nature and utility of off-the-job training in apprenticeships and traineeships.
The findings confirm the conclusions of earlier studies about the
importance of off-the-job training as a supplement for workplace learning. It
was found that, while initially not attaching much value to off-the-job
training, the young people gained more of an appreciation, during the
course of the year, of what off-the-job training had to offer. Other findings
about off-the-job training included: the superiority of face-to-face training as
opposed to other forms of delivery; the importance of the young people’s
relationships with their off-the-job trainers; the ‘implicit contract’ of
expectations of the parties to the training contract; the different viewpoints
of the parties; and the dissatisfaction of those in traineeships with the lack
of intellectual challenge in their competency-based curriculum.

Introduction
Australia has a strong apprenticeship and traineeship system, with the
numbers of young people and adults engaged in such contracts of
training rising rapidly over the past 7 years, supported by funding and
infrastructure initiatives. In 2000, 275,000 apprentices and trainees were
in training (Robinson, 2001). In this respect, Australia differs from other
developed countries such as the United States where apprenticeships
have never been an important part of skill formation (Capelli, 1996), or
the United Kingdom where Modern Apprenticeships in the 1990s did not
achieve the hoped-for success in the rebuilding of the all-but-extinct
traditional apprenticeship system (Gray & Morgan, 1998; Robinson, 2001).
While there have been some difficulties associated with the recent rapid
expansion in Australia, mainly to do with irregularities relating to funding

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Erica Smith
and subsidies in traineeships (e.g. Schofield, 1999), these difficulties are
being addressed in various recent policy changes. It is likely, therefore,
that the system will continue in its present or similar form for the
foreseeable future, and will continue to provide a useful site for the study
of formal training for entry-level workers in both on and off-the-job
settings.
This article draws on the findings of a detailed study, in New South
Wales (NSW), Australia, which described eleven young people’s learning
during their first year of full-time work (Smith, 2000). Eight of these young
people, who were all teenage school-leavers, were engaged in ‘contracts
of training’. This meant that they were employed as apprentices or
trainees, entitled to government-funded off-the-job training intended to
take place within normal working hours. These eight young people are
the focus of this article. The article reports on those findings of the study
that related to relative expectations and actual experience, of off-the-job
training. The findings were drawn from repeated interviews with the eight
apprentices and trainees, their parents, their managers and their off-the-
job trainers.

Off-the-job Training in Apprenticeships and Traineeships

The research was focused upon finding out what the young people
learned and how they learned it. For the apprentices and trainees, this
involved examination of both on- and off-the-job learning. Such an
examination inevitably touched upon areas of importance in policy terms,
since a major component of Australian vocational and education (VET)
policy consists of increasing the numbers of apprentices and trainees
through funding and structural initiatives relating to both workplaces and
training providers, in a manner which is not supported by all
commentators. This section of the article sets the policy context, and
discusses previous research into off-the-job learning in apprenticeships
and traineeships.

Australian Policy Developments in Apprenticeships and Traineeships

In Australia, before the mid-1980s, contracted entry-level training was
only available in traditional apprenticeships in a limited range of
occupations. The Kirby report (1985) on entry-level training advocated
the establishment of 1-year traineeships in ‘non-trade’ occupations for 16-
and 17-year-olds, which would involve part-time off-the-job training for
20% of the time, reflected in pay rates set at 80% of normal wages (now
well-established as the National Training Wage). After a slow start, in
1996/7 the numbers of trainee commencements exceeded apprentice
commencements for the first time (Robinson, 1999, p. 9). Traineeships
began mainly in clerical, retail, hospitality and public sector jobs, but

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have now expanded greatly (Bush, 1992), into a wide range of industries
including traditional trade areas (Roberts, 1996). Despite the lifting of age
restrictions for apprenticeships and traineeships, and the subsequent
rise of adult participants, Robinson (1999) points out that the proportion
of 15-24-year-olds in apprenticeships and traineeships as a proportion of
all young people aged 15-24 has remained constant during the 1990s.
Together with and linked to the rise of traineeships, changes have
been made to the Australian apprentice system. These have included
various alterations to the subsidy arrangements for employers (e.g.
Fooks, 1997)[1] the abolition of ‘declared trades’ in all States except NSW
and, as with traineeships, the removal of age restrictions for employment
of apprentices. These have been designed to improve access to
apprenticeships and to extend coverage to other industries.
There have also been attempts to amalgamate apprenticeships and
traineeships under three similar, successive, schemes: the Australian
Vocational Training System (AVTS)[2] the Modern Australian
Apprenticeship System (MAATS) and New Apprenticeships, the current
umbrella term. The continuing attempt to amalgamate apprenticeships
and traineeships has not only been actively resisted by some States –
Queensland, for instance, has refused to use the term New
Apprenticeships (Schofield, 1999) – but has also made collection of
meaningful statistics difficult. The National Centre for Vocational
Education Research (NCVER), which collects vocational education and
training (VET) statistics on behalf of the Australian National Training
Authority (ANTA), is now required to combine apprentices and trainees
in its collections, and can only estimate the separate numbers for
apprentices and trainees by assuming that those in contracted training
for over two years are apprentices (NCVER, 1999a, p. 10).
Group Training Companies (GTCs) employ apprentices and trainees
and arrange their off-the-job training, sending them to host employers
who lease them for a weekly fee (Harris et al, 1998). Sometimes the
apprentices and trainees experience a number of host employers, but in
some cases they stay with one employer for the complete period of their
contract (Smith, 1996). Although GTCs have been in existence since the
early 1980s, the numbers of apprentices and trainees employed by GTCs
rose rapidly in the mid-1990s, having been granted increased prominence
and funding under various training reform measures, with a proportion of
13.9% (approximately 29,000) of all apprentices and trainees in 1998
employed by GTCs (NCVER, 1999b).
Two further developments in contracted training, user choice and
100% on-the-job training, are important as background to this article,
since two of the four trainees were being trained fully on the job and only
one trainee was attending a local TAFE college. Before the mid-1990s, off-
the-job training, the provision of which was legislated into
apprenticeships, always took place at the nearest available Technical and

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Erica Smith
Further Education (TAFE) college, the public provider.[3] ‘User choice’
was introduced in 1997 by ANTA in traineeships and apprenticeships, as
a mechanism for allowing enterprises (supposedly in consultation with
their apprentices and trainees) to select their preferred provider for the
off-the-job portion of training, and the method of training delivery. Under
user choice, government funding for this part of the training flows
directly to the selected training provider (Noble et al, 1997). User choice
policy has been extensively critiqued on many grounds. There are
arguments that apprentices and trainees may have neither the
information (Selby Smith et al, 1996), the power (DTEC Equity Policy
Branch, 1997) nor the capacity or interest (Coopers & Lybrand
Consultants, 1996) to make decisions about their off-the-job training. User
choice has been implemented differently in different States (KPMG
Management Consulting, 1998) and, at the time of the study in NSW, user
choice was fully implemented only in traineeships.
In on-the-job apprenticeships and traineeships, the ‘off-the-job’
(government funded) portion of the training is delivered on the job.
Enterprises can ‘self-select’ under user choice, i.e. they can – within
certain bounds – choose themselves (if a registered training organisation)
as the ‘external’ provider. Where the enterprise is not itself a Registered
Training Organisation under the Australian Quality Training Framework
(AQTF), a nominated external provider must be responsible for
monitoring the on-the-job training. While many on-the-job traineeships
are in small businesses, a large number of on-the-job trainees are
employed by large companies in process or assembly line work which
formerly had little formal training attached, for example, in the food
processing and automotive industries (Smith & Smith, 1998). Companies
that participate in these traineeships typically engage all of their shop-
floor workers (teenage and adult alike) as trainees (Smith & Smith, 1998).
On-the-job traineeships have been the subject of considerable
government interest, first in Queensland, where two research reports
(Brandi, 1999; Schofield, 1999) highlighted ‘rorts’, or financial
improprieties, in the system. These reports were followed by similar
reviews in other States. Such problems are not unique to Australia.
Capelli (1996), for instance, in a discussion of the British Youth Training
scheme, highlights both the difficulty of ensuring sound training practices
amongst employers of youth trainees, and the necessity of paying close
attention to the manner of administering government subsidies. Changes
in user choice funding arrangements in several Australian States from
2001 have tightened up eligibility and restricted the use of on-the-job
traineeships for many companies.

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Off-the-job Learning in Apprenticeships and Traineeships

Since a feature of apprenticeships in many countries is the provision of
off-the-job training, there have been a number of studies of apprentices’
off-the-job, as well as on-the-job learning. Venables (1967, 1974) provides
detailed discussion of both off and on-the-job training of engineering
apprentices in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Smaller-scale studies have
been undertaken by a variety of researchers; for example, in Germany
(Hamilton, 1990) and Australia (Wilson & Engelhard, 1994a,b; Smith, 1996,
1998; Brooker & Butler, 1997; Harris et al, 1998). Most recently, a suite of
Australian research projects funded by the Australian National Training
Authority have been collected in Smart (2001). While most of these
studies include consideration of off-the-job training alongside on-the-job
training, there have also been a much smaller number of studies
exclusively of off-the-job training in apprenticeships. Recent Australian
examples include Evans & Butler (1992), Butler & Brooker (1998) and
Scofield (1992). Harris & Simons (1999, p. 75), in a study of building
apprentices, sum up the relative contributions of on- and off-the-job
training as follows, in a manner which reflects the findings from much of
the literature referred to above:
Learning on the job is perceived to be more real life,
contextualised and relevant, concerned primarily with the ‘how’,
efficient though not necessarily correct, more observational and
manipulative, more immediate, more time pressures, more ‘just
in time’ and improvised, and more incidental and one to one in
nature. On the other hand, learning off the job is perceived to be
more theoretical and by the book, concerned primarily with the
‘why’, less up to date in method and equipment, more
explanatory, detached, less time pressured, more detailed and
deliberate, broader in scope and more group oriented and paced
in nature
Two recent Australian studies have examined learning processes in 100%
on-the-job traineeships (i.e. where the ‘off-the-job’ portion is delivered on
the job). Misko et al (2001) in South Australia found that only between 12
and 15% of on-the-job trainees (depending on field of study) were given
regular allocated time during working hours to do the ‘off-the-job’
component of their traineeship. Similarly, Strickland et al (2001) in a
survey of apprentices and trainees, found that those in what they called
‘workplace only’ contracts, a substantial number of young people
reported lack of opportunity to talk with their employer about their
training, and also a gap between what the young people thought was
important for their learning and what actually existed in their workplaces.
Recent research in the United Kingdom (e.g. Keep, 2002) has highlighted
similar problems in work-based modern apprenticeships.

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Erica Smith

Research Method Used in the Study

Case studies were carried out, over a 12-month period in 1998-1999, of
eight apprentices and trainees in rural and metropolitan New South
Wales. The young people were interviewed four times, the first time being
either just before they started work or soon after. Their off-the-job
trainers, parents and employers were interviewed twice.
Table I describes the apprentices and trainees in the study, the
nature of their jobs and the type of off –the-job contracted training in
which they were engaged.

Name Gender Employment Industry Location Off-the-job

(pseudo- status training
nym)
Brett M Apprentice Engineering Wagga Day-release
(GTC) Wagga TAFE
Heather F Apprentice Hairdressing Wagga Day-release
Wagga TAFE
Paul M Apprentice Electrical Sydney Day-release
(GTC) (contracting) TAFE
Graham M Apprentice Electrical Wagga Day-release
(appliance Wagga TAFE
repairs)
Maddy F Trainee Sports Wagga Interstate
administration Wagga TAFE –
distance
education
Mike M Trainee Hospitality Sydney Day-release
TAFE
Cary F Trainee Hospitality Wagga 100% on the
then retail Wagga job
Jared M Trainee Meat Wagga 100% on the
processing Wagga job
Note: ‘GTC’ denotes that the apprentice was employed by a Group Training
Company, rather than directly by the employer.

Table I. The apprentices and trainees in the study.

Off-the-job Training Structures

Because the study was carried out in New South Wales, ‘user choice’ was,
at the time of the study, operating only for the trainees, not the
apprentices. The apprentices were, therefore, all doing their off-the-job
training on day-release at TAFE. For trainees, it seemed to be the case
that the employer, rather than the employee selected the training
provider, with the exception of Maddy who, with the support of her

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manager, had rung around providers and selected the one she thought
would be most useful to her. Only Mike among the trainees was involved
in traditional day-release at TAFE, with Maddy undertaking a distance
education course with a Victorian TAFE provider, and Cary and Jeremy
doing on-the-job traineeships. The young peoples’ parents were unaware
that their children had any say in the choice of training provider. Cary’s
mother said:
At the time I don’t think Cary knew whether she would be
attending TAFE or whether it would be just modules, like distance
education stuff.
Although the young people in the study had no serious criticism at first,
of the training providers and mode of study that were selected for them,
this may not be typical. Several young people interviewed by telephone
during preliminary sample selection, who were studying at private
providers, indicated their wish to change to a TAFE college from the
private provider that their employers had chosen for them. This supports
the arguments by the DTEC Equity Policy Branch (1997) that, under user
choice, the power in decisions relating to provider and mode of training
would reside with employers, rather than being shared between
employers and employees.
The trainees in the study appeared to be getting good support
initially to complete their off-the-job qualifications; Maddy’s employer
bought her a laptop computer so that she could study at work or at
home, and Cary’s first boss put time aside to work through the workbook
with Cary. However, once this manager left, Cary received no more
training. At Jared’s abattoir, all trainees in the company, although their
traineeships were nominally on the job, were given structured off-the-job
classes in the training room. In addition, they received coaching while
working. The Human Resources manager said:
We usually put the trainees alongside other employees who act as
on-site trainers. As they become competent in different skills they
can move into a team and learn all those processes.
There were also supposed to be 2 hours of off-the-job training each
fortnight.
However, after an initial burst of activity, Jared noted that little
formal training took place. Similarly, Maddy’s promised ‘Wednesdays of
study’ rarely occurred after her first manager had left, although her new
manager allowed her to attend extra face-to-face training locally.

Expectations of Learning and Training

In initial interviews the apprentices and trainees all mentioned the value
they placed upon the training and qualifications they were to complete.

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Erica Smith
The trainees valued the qualification itself perhaps more than the training
to be undertaken during the traineeship. Their comments included:
It’ll get me trained and assist me to get into uni (through direct
articulation).

A traineeship gives you education and the practical. It’s the best
of both worlds. You get your foot in the door because you get a
certificate.

I was quite pleased that it would get me the certificate. When my

brother started there they didn’t have that. When you go on to do
something else you’ve got something behind you.
On the whole, trainees and apprentices alike expected to learn more at
work than in their off-the-job training, although it was the off-the-job
training that would earn them their qualifications. They generally
appeared to realise, however, that TAFE covered areas (which they
described as ‘theory’ or ‘technical knowledge’) that would not be covered
at work. Heather, for example, said she would learn:
... more the scientific stuff of hairdressing at TAFE, mixing colours
and so on. In the salon they teach you more how to cut, but at
TAFE you’ll learn different styles and that.
The two on-the-job trainees, Cary and Jared, were less clear than the
other apprentices and trainees about the arrangements for the ‘off-the-
job’ component of their training, who was responsible for assessing them
and so on. For instance, Cary knew that ‘modules’ arrived, although was
unclear from where; this side of it was organised by a staff member at a
local employment services provider who had been involved in the
traineeship recruitment process:
There are different sections, like money transactions, and lists of
outcomes where I have to achieve competency, and I have to sign
and so does Jade. [her manager] Each competency-based thing
has different criteria I have to meet. Each outcome is marked off.
We have the option of which to do first.
Cary was unsure whether there was any formal assessment or whether
she had to send any assignments to her nominal training provider; all this
seemed to be arranged through the employment services provider. It
became apparent later in the research that an external training provider
was supposed to monitor Cary’s training; however, when difficulties
arose because of a change of manager both providers refused to take any
responsibility and Cary only received her qualification following the
intervention of the researcher. Cary’s confusion reflects Lundberg’s
(1994) assertion that young people and their parents have found the
move away from TAFE, the public provider, as the only VET provider

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bewildering. Cary’s case is typical of those cited by Schofield (1999) in

the latter’s discussion of the dangers inherent in the marketisation of
employment services and traineeships, where subsidies and outcome
payment can take precedence over training outcomes.
In general the apprentices’ and trainees’ employers had higher
expectations of TAFE than the young people did. They knew that there
were certain types of learning – theory and product knowledge in
particular – which supervisors or co-workers in the workplace might not
have time to teach the young people. Paul’s employer explained, in
relation to TAFE:
They need a wide base. They don’t necessarily use all that (at
work), but they need a basic knowledge of their trade. It also
teaches them to learn, to apply themselves to study and learning,
and a feeling of accomplishment so they can show they’ve
finished something.
There was also a general acknowledgment, sometimes explicit,
sometimes implicit, that production took precedence over learning at
work (Evans, 1993).
For instance, Mike’s manager said:
In beverages at TAFE they learn how drinks are made and the
difference between a bourbon and a scotch, different types of
wine and so on. They don’t learn all that here because no-one
would have time for it.
Cary’s original manager, although keen to do her best with the ‘off-the-
job’ component of training, had some misgivings about the fact that
Cary’s training was wholly within the workplace. She said:
I can’t see how they can just allow anybody to train somebody
because I think it would be unfair to the trainees. They might be
taught by someone who doesn’t know what they are doing. Say
you had two people doing exactly the same traineeship. You
might have one person that was really good (at training) and the
other is not so good; then there would be a disadvantage for the
trainee (who was employed by the poor trainer). I don’t know. I
don’t even know how they say, ‘Right, you are fit to train
somebody or not fit to train.’ I think because I have done it before
they were happy to give that to me.
In view of what happened to Cary after this manager left, it appeared that
these fears were justified.
Some of the parents placed a great deal of importance on the off-the-
job component of their children’s training. Brett’s father said:
Education is part of doing a trade. Although you never stop
learning, whatever you’re doing, at TAFE you can pick up

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Erica Smith
knowledge quicker ... You’re doing the theory side of it and the
practical at the same time; it’s the best way to learn.

The Importance of Off-the-job Training

As discussed in the literature (e.g. Hamilton, 1990; Harris et al, 1998) and
as foreshadowed by the employers, off-the-job training generally added
an extra dimension to the training undertaken by the young people. For
example, it afforded the chance to learn about practices in other
companies and to learn skills that might not be utilised in the particular
workplace. Graham said that the theory he had learned at TAFE was
valuable because an electrician could come across a problem at any time
that required background knowledge. Learning about other workplaces
was not always welcome, however; Graham felt uncomfortable because
TAFE made him realise how different the work he did was from most
other apprentices; as an appliance repairer he felt out of place among
other students who predominantly worked as domestic electricians.
Brett’s TAFE studies made him uncomfortably aware of the fact that his
employer’s machinery was old-fashioned. He became quite dissatisfied
with his workplace because of this.
Where there was no off-site off-the-job training, the amount of
training was subject to the whims of the organisation and of the
supervisor. This was the case for the two ‘on-the-job’ trainees. Even with
the best of intentions, production pressures (as at the abattoir where
Jared worked) often took precedence over training. The best of intentions
were not always present or, in some cases, were present with one
supervisor, but absent when the supervisor changed. For the on-the-job
trainees, the ‘off-the-job’ part of training was rarely carried out in a
systematic manner (Cary’s first manager being the exception), but was
only attended to when both parties felt sufficiently guilty about not
attending to it. In Jared’s case his traineeship training was only
remembered when he handed in his notice at the end of the year and
wished to have his progress assessed for the award of his Certificate. In
Maddy’s case, while she was not nominally an on-the-job trainee, the fact
that her off-the-job training was by distance education meant that she
was in many ways in a similar situation. She suffered from a lack of
scheduled training events in the same way. While any workplace might
offer inferior on-the-job training, where there was no off-the-job training
as a ‘safety net’ the consequences were potentially much more serious.

Connections Between Off-the-job Training and the Workplace

Some authors (e.g. Billett, 1993; Merle, 1994) have argued for close links
between on and off-the-job training, while others (e.g. Smith, 1998) have

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noted that in practice links are not regularly made nor even possible or
desirable. In the case studies, most of the employers had little idea about
the young person’s week-by-week progress at TAFE and no opportunities
seemed to be made for the young people to practice what they had
learned at TAFE. Similarly, TAFE teachers were not generally familiar with
what the young person was doing at work. For example, Paul’s TAFE
teacher, at the time of the second interview, was not even certain
whether or for whom Paul was working at that time. While the dichotomy
between work and off-the-job training is often construed by policy bodies
and by researchers as a problem (e.g. Evaluation and Monitoring Branch,
DEET, 1993) there was no indication from any of the respondents that the
dichotomy was dysfunctional in any way. One TAFE teacher, Mike’s
teacher Robert, consciously incorporated his knowledge of his students’
workplaces into his teaching, but this was in order to show the students a
variety of practices rather than to highlight links between individual
students’ workplaces and their TAFE training.
In their recent study, Harris et al (1998), rather than simplistically
advocating links between on- and off-the-job training, note the importance
of mutual respect between the off-the-job provider and the employing
organisation. Such respect was not always present in the case studies.
For example, while Brett’s manager approved of TAFE training in
principle, he was very critical of the self-paced learning strategies at the
local TAFE college. He thought that young people were simply not up to
this type of learning, a view well supported in the literature (Misko, 1994;
Smith et al, 1997). He said:
It’s more of a university environment ... they throw them to the
wolves. Most of them (the students) are behind, and I hear
around the town everybody else is too.
Similarly, the head of department at TAFE, whilst acknowledging the
commitment of Brett’s employer to training, was somewhat disparaging
about the old-fashioned nature of the machinery there. It is doubtful
whether these two people had ever actually discussed their impressions
of each other’s training environments. Similarly, one of Graham’s TAFE
teachers was astonished by Graham’s rough-and-ready approach to some
work tasks, an approach that he had obviously learned in his workplace:
Some of the early stuff Graham did in prac [practical workshop
sessions] was pretty amazing. He was doing short-cuts to do the
exercises. Like if something was the wrong shape he would knock
it with a hammer rather than put it in the bender.
Learning ‘proper’ methods at TAFE as opposed to ‘near enough is good
enough’ in the workplace is, again, a common finding in the literature
(Wilson & Engelhard, 1994b; Smith, 1996). However despite these
reservations on both sides, there was little evidence that a disapproval of

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providers’ methods of training was construed as a disapproval of off-the-
job training per se.

Processes of Learning off the Job

The research showed that the young people learned much that was not
explicitly provided by training. In general, however, it was difficult to get
much information about the processes by which the young people
learned off the job, as compared with on the job. Some of the TAFE
teachers did not appear to know the young people well, or to be able to
offer a great deal of comment upon their learning. In some cases this was
because the young person had different teachers for different subjects,
but this was not always so. Most of the apprentices’ teachers, in
particular, seemed to prefer discussing what was in the curriculum, and
the class as a whole, rather than the individual young person. There were
exceptions, like Heather; her teacher clearly knew her well, as the
following comment shows:
She has finished her cutting (competencies); she’s fairly well
there. There are areas that I think she hesitated and paused.
Heather’s pause isn’t a ‘I want to go slow’ pause; it is a thinking
pause.
The teachers responsible for the trainees (Mike’s face-to-face teacher,
Maddy’s distance education teacher, and Jared’s worksite trainer)
appeared more inclined to view the students as individuals than did the
apprentices’ teachers. In general, though, most of the information about
off-the-job training was gathered from the young person.
While most of the young people enjoyed their TAFE training, finding,
as one said, that ‘it’s more of an adult learning environment than school’
there were sharp differences between the apprentices and the trainees
about its nature and utility. The apprentices found their TAFE studies
challenging. Each apprentice reported some difficulty with it and
mentioned that he or she needed to do extra work to keep up. For
example, Brett said:
I found it hard to pass things. I kept getting in trouble for not
passing ... They don’t like you being behind. The head teacher
was getting a bit angry with me for a while.
He found the whole experience full of anxiety; because the course was
self-paced, timing was used as a proxy for grades (as in Smith et al, 1997).
Mid-way through the year, he almost gave up and resigned from his job.
He then attended extra evening classes at TAFE, in numeracy and in skills
training; by doing this, he moved from being assessed as the worst
prospect in the class to being estimated by the head teacher as in the
‘top 30%’ of the class at the end of the year. Brett’s confidence at work

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appeared to grow in parallel with his performance at TAFE. By the end of

the year he was able to say:
The head teacher’s really got confidence in me; he said today
‘You’ll finish the whole year, that’s excellent.’ I’ve learned a fair
bit, all the work that I’ve done at TAFE, I’m surprised that I’ve got
through it. I’m over the moon how much I’ve done.
Graham coped with his TAFE difficulties by getting extra tuition from his
father, who was also his employer, and was surprised by how much he
learned at TAFE and the way he could cope with it. Paul failed to seek any
help and failed his year, having to repeat the entire year.
The trainees, on the other hand, found TAFE too easy. The trainees
uniformly found their TAFE training ‘weak’, in common with the English
VET students in Riseborough’s (1993) study. They expressed
disappointment that TAFE was not stretching them more. Their parents
were also disappointed. Maddy’s father described her TAFE work as
‘study in inverted commas’; Cary’s parents thought most of the
curriculum merely repeated what Cary had learned in the part-time jobs
she had undertaken while she was at school. Such comments can often be
related to the competency-based nature of the curriculum, with its pass-
fail assessment system, and its ‘academicisation’ of routine work
activities (Riseborough, 1993).
Three of the trainees mentioned with disapproval the way that they
could ‘tick off’ large numbers of competencies in the workplace. Rather
than seeing this as valuing what they learned at work, they saw it as
weak: ‘it’s not really learning’. Mike, for instance, described an
assignment where he had to plan a banquet for a large number of people
and the fact that he found this too easy as he had been involved in this
kind of activity at work. However, it should also be noted that the
trainees’ views about the easiness of their studies were not always borne
out by their teachers’ views about their achievements.
The finding that trainees found their studies too easy perhaps
reflects an anomaly in the qualification level of apprenticeships and
traineeships. Apprenticeships are normally at a Certificate III, while
traineeships are at Certificate II (although other levels of qualification
within traineeships are possible and becoming more common). However,
in the current study the trainees were, on the whole, far better educated
than the apprentices, having all completed Year 12 (the final year of
schooling in Australia) and each having considered university as an
alternative to a traineeship. In the Kirby report (1985), traineeships had
been primarily conceived as a labour market entry route for early school
leavers and unemployed young, but the nature of trainees is now
generally accepted as being very different from the client group for which
they were originally intended.

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Erica Smith
The act of physically attending a training provider appeared to be
important to the young people. Maddy studied by distance education, but
was pleased to be able to undertake some modules with a local private
training provider because she learned better in a group. These modules
were ones that could have been ‘marked off myself’, as she put it, in the
workplace, but she knew she learned them better by attending a college:
I found the course a lot easier to learn with a group ... I would
have been able to mark off the modules myself at work, but I
don’t think I would have done them as well. In the class situation
I would say ‘How did you do that?’ and it was heaps better.
Cary wished fervently that she had gone to TAFE: ‘At least I would have
got TAFE recognition’. Attending college also served the purpose of
motivating the young people to keep learning. Jared, by contrast, in his
on-the-job traineeship, was supposed to keep his workbook up to date by
himself. After keeping it in his locker at work for a few months, Jared took
his workbook home and did not look at it again until he updated it just
before leaving the job.
A further function of TAFE was to allow the students to learn from
each other (Harris et al, 1998). Several apprentices mentioned that they
‘swapped stories’ or that they asked other apprentices about aspects of
the job not covered in their own workplaces. They gauged their progress
against other apprentices: Heather noted that some of the hairdressing
apprentices were allowed to cut hair at work whilst others were not. Only
in Mike’s case did the teacher appear to consciously incorporate learning
from other students into the curriculum; generally, the swapping of
stories and skills took place during meal breaks.

Relationships Between on and Off-the-job Learning

The apprentices and trainees were asked in the first interview and then in
the final interview what proportion of what they learned would and had
had come from work and what proportion had come from their off-the-job
training. Table II shows the responses that they gave.
Although the figures given in the Table represent the young people’s
subjective judgments of relative learning from work and TAFE, rather
than objective measures, they are nevertheless interesting. Even if they
are only taken to represent attitudes towards the respective sites of
learning, rather than actual amounts learned, the figures indicate that
apprentices appeared to rate the relative input of their TAFE learning
quite highly and tended to learn more from TAFE than they had expected
to. Brett was a prime example of this, expecting to learn very little at
TAFE (10% only), but finding instead that he learned as much from TAFE
as he did at work. There was also a difference between the apprentices
and the trainees (although two trainees did not give a response in the

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final interview). Both Maddy and Mike felt that the amount they gained
from off-the-job learning was very small. This finding is consistent with
the trainees’ belief that TAFE was too easy, while the apprentices found
their TAFE study challenging.

Young Status Expectation Expectation of Actual work Actual TAFE/

person of work TAFE/ off-the- learning off-the-job
learning job learning learning
Brett App 90% 10% 50% 50%
Heather App More Less 50% 50%
Paul App More Less 70% 30%
Graham App More Less 60% 40%
Maddy Trn More Less 80% 20%
Mike Trn No record No record 90% 10%
Cary Trn More Less No record No record
Jared Trn More Less No record No record
Table II. Self-reported proportion learned from TAFE (or other off-job provision)
and from work – expected (beginning of year) and actual (end of year).

As discussed above, few formal links were made between on- and off-the-
job training. However the young people themselves made many links
between what they were learning on and off the job. This supports Harris
et al’s (1998, p. viii) view of an apprentice as a ‘mediator of, while
simultaneously a client in ... different learning environments’. They often
compared methods learned at TAFE and at work. Sometimes they
preferred the TAFE method; Brett, for instance, found TAFE much more
insistent upon safety than his workplace. Sometimes they preferred
workplace methods; Heather considered the cutting techniques used by
her manager, Max, better than the techniques she was taught at
TAFE. She said:
With cutting, they (at TAFE) told us to take down each section
and cut it along the same guidelines, but with Max you cut your
guideline and then your next one will always be a little bit longer
so that when the hair dries naturally it doesn’t all kick out at the
bottom, it sorts of sits around it.
Although the apprentices found TAFE learning easier when it related to
what they did at work, they also appreciated the chance to learn aspects
of the trade that they did not cover at work. These findings all confirm
the literature about on- and off–the-job training in apprenticeships.
The trainees appeared to value links between on- and off-the-job
learning more than apprentices did. They tended to get impatient when
assignments or activities did not relate to work. For example, Mike said:
Why do we have to know the names of a hundred different types
of bread or lettuce? You’d never use that at work.

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Erica Smith
This may relate to the low-level nature of the curriculum; if ‘routine work
activities’ are made into a curriculum, as Riseborough (1993) notes, then
students perhaps expect to learn nothing more that what they do at work.
Although they yearned for ‘harder’ TAFE study, they did not want to learn
non-job-relevant material that was also simplistic. More importantly,
perhaps, in the trainees’ areas there did not seem (to them) to be a body
of trade knowledge that they could have respect for and aspire to
mastering.

Major Issues Raised by the Study

Some of the findings of the study confirm previous research studies; for
example, about the importance of off-the-job training as a chance to learn
theory and to find out about different ways of doing things. A number of
new or relatively under-researched areas were also uncovered. These
included the importance of the nature of the off-the-job training and of
the young person’s relationship with individual trainers, and the beliefs of
the different parties about off-the-job training and the change in these
beliefs over time. These points are important in policy terms because the
system of apprenticeships and traineeships requires a partnership
between young people, their employers and their off-the-job trainers, as
well as involvement of and encouragement from parents. In view of the
dearth of research about learning in traineeships, another important area
was that concerning trainees’ view of their off-the-job curriculum. A brief
discussion of these issues follows.

Mode of Off-the-job Training

In the past nearly all apprentice training has been off the job on day or
block release (Brooker & Butler, 1997; Huddlestone, 1998). There have
been relatively few studies of different modes of off-the-job delivery in
contracted entry-level training, although there is a growing literature on
different modes of delivery in VET in general, especially most recently
relating to online delivery (e.g. Brennan et al, 2001). P. Smith (2000) found
that apprentices preferred a high degree of structure and a large amount
of social interaction in their off-the-job training. Maddy’s experiences as a
distance learner confirmed the common view that distance learning is not
a good means of learning for young learners; and Brett’s experiences
support Smith et al’s (1997) findings on the inappropriateness of self-
paced learning for school-leavers in VET. Maddy’s enthusiastic comments
about the occasional face to face classes she attended clearly support P.
Smith’s (2000b) findings on the utility of social interaction.
The current study also confirmed other recent studies concerning
difficulties involved in 100% on-the-job training. Specific issues identified
by participants in the current study included:

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• dependence on the goodwill and expertise of the manager;

• need for the trainee/apprentice to have high levels of motivation;
• production pressures precluding time for off-task study;
• lack of an external adult with the interests of the young person at
heart.

Although not specifically mentioned by participants, who were all overly

concerned with those problems identified above, it appeared to the
researcher that the on-the-job trainees had narrower opportunities for
learning than the other trainees and apprentices.

Relationships with Off-the-job Trainers

It was clear that most of the young people valued their relationships with
their off-the-job trainers. Brett, for example, was very unhappy when he
felt that his teachers were dissatisfied with his progress. An earlier study
by the author (Smith, 1996) found that apprentices tended to value their
workplace training more when they were unhappy at TAFE and vice
versa, and the current study supported this finding. Strickland et al
(2001) found differences between apprentices and trainees in their
relationships with their teachers. They found that apprentices looked to
their teachers more for trade knowledge, whereas trainees looked to
them more for career advice. They attributed this to the short-term
nature of traineeships. In the current study Mike, the only trainee
attending TAFE regularly, relied upon his teacher heavily as a mentor,
with his teacher even intervening at work on his behalf. The apprentices’
teachers, on the other hand, had a ‘hands-off’ attitude to workplaces.
While no specific conclusions emerged, a general finding was that
relationships with off-the-job trainers were perhaps more important to
the apprentices and trainees than the trainers themselves realised.

The Implicit Contract

While the apprentices and trainees all had formal indenture papers,
which set out the responsibilities of the parties to the contract of
training, more important than this piece of paper was their ‘implicit
contract’. This was a form of the ‘psychological contract’ often referred to
in human resource management literature, defined by Schuler (1995, G-
14) as ‘(a)n informal and unwritten understanding between employees
and employer about what it is reasonable to expect from an employee in
exchange for what is in the employment contract’. The young people and
their parents had the following expectations.

447
Erica Smith
Employers/managers would provide:
• the necessary physical infrastructure for effective learning;
• their own time for coaching purposes;
• time away from production for the apprentice or trainee to learn in the
workplace.
Training providers would provide:
• programs of intellectual rigour;
• support when the trainee or apprentice was struggling.
‘Somebody’:
• would sort out the contractual arrangements when things went wrong.
When the implicit contract was not adhered to, distress was caused to
the young people. There were several examples. Brett was unhappy that
the machinery at his workplace was old, and not up to the standard of
that available at TAFE or at his class-mates’ workplaces. In this respect,
he was like those engineering apprentices in medium-sized workplaces
described by Venables (1967) who disliked the ‘atmosphere of dirt,
disorder and oil’ in which they worked. The trainees were uniformly not
impressed with the lack of intellectual content in the off-the-job
components of their training, expecting more challenge and more
knowledge from their courses. The on-the-job trainees felt they were
entitled to a better deal with regard to training, although Jared was more
forgiving in this respect than Cary. The lack of a ‘somebody’ to sort things
out when things were wrong was apparent in two cases. Brett’s parents
had attempted to persuade his employer, the Group Training Company,
to intervene when they were unhappy with the training he received at
TAFE, but the GTC refused. Cary tried several avenues to resolve the
difficulty with her certificate, but the nominal training provider, the
employment services agency that had originally placed her in the job and
the local office of the State training authority all failed to assist. Her
difficulties were reminiscent of some of the cases described by
Hodkinson & Hodkinson (1995) in their United Kingdom study of young
people undertaking the training credits scheme.

Different Views Among Young People,

Employers, TAFE Teachers and Parents
The study highlighted the different views of the various parties to the
contract of training. It has already been noted (e.g. by Harris et al, 1998)
that TAFE teachers and employers place different value upon off-the-job
training and other parts of the learning and training process. The current
study confirmed these findings, and also showed that young people and
their parents also had different views about the value and quality of off-

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the-job training. Moreover, the views of each party varied over time, as
did the propensity of the young people to favour the opinions and advice
offered by each relevant adult. The relationship among the parties was
continually evolving and shifting. It would be difficult to capture this
picture through any one-off study.

‘Thin’ Curriculum in Traineeships

It has already been explained that the trainees in the study were
dissatisfied with the ‘thin’ nature of their off-the-job training. The
undemanding nature of the curriculum may have several roots, including:

• the fact that traineeships are generally at Certificate II,[4] while

participants may be (as in the case of this study) academically able;
• the original concept of traineeships as a labour market programme –
their original location in TAFE colleges was often within sections that
ran short courses for unemployed young people;
• the fact that traineeship qualifications are often in ‘newer’ industry
areas without an established body of trade knowledge;
• the fact that many of the courses were developed after the advent of
competency-based training (CBT) in the early 1990s.

Arguments about the drawbacks of CBT have been well rehearsed in the
Australian and international literature (e.g. Smith & Keating, 1997; Burke,
1989). The English ethnographic study by Riseborough (1993) is,
however, one of only a few studies that examine students’ attitudes to
CBT. The current study strongly supports Riseborough’s findings, which
have been briefly discussed above. Current changes to CBT in Australia
with the advent of Training Packages [5] (Smith, 2001), which are even
more firmly rooted in workplace practice than older CBT curriculum, may
add to the dissatisfaction of trainees with their curriculum. It would be
unfortunate if able young people were disillusioned with VET
qualifications as a result of their experience in traineeships, as they might
then not take advantage of articulation arrangements into higher level
qualifications. In apprenticeship off-the-job training, by contrast, it
seemed that there was still a high content of ‘theory’ and other trade
knowledge. It seemed that curriculum staff and teachers had managed to
retain such content through the conversion to CBT. This ‘theory’ was
respected by the apprentices and they took pleasure in mastering it,
although they found it difficult.

Conclusion
The study provided an insight into the lived experiences of young
apprentices and trainees and the adults who surrounded and supported

449
Erica Smith
them in their on- and off-the-job training. While the small numbers
involved in the study means the strength of the conclusions must be
tempered, the consistency of the findings with other studies suggests a
wide applicability. This report on their off-the-job training has highlighted
several issues that seemed to be of importance to the young peoples’
persistence in their apprenticeships and traineeships, their satisfaction
with their work and learning, and the effectiveness of their learning. While
all of the young people tended to privilege on- against off-the-job training
when they began their contracts of training, the balance shifted
somewhat during their first year of employment, with a greater
understanding of how off-the-job training could broaden their learning
and make up for deficiencies in their workplaces. The findings make a
very strong argument for the inclusion in apprenticeships and
traineeships of face-to-face off-the-job training at an external training
provider. While other commentators (e.g. Strickland et al, 2001) believe
that the problems inherent in 100% on-the-job apprenticeships and
traineeships can be overcome with stricter use of devices such as
training plans, the detailed processes observed in the case studies
described above suggest otherwise.

Correspondence
Erica Smith, School of Education, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 588,
Wagga Wagga, New South Wales 2678, Australia (esmith@csu.edu.au).

Notes
[1] Over the years various subsidies have existed to encourage employers to
recruit and retain apprentices and trainees. Larger subsidies are in place
for young people belonging to various disadvantaged groups.
[2] AVTS itself had two fore-runner acronyms: AVCS and AVCTS
[3] Somewhat different arrangements obtained for traineeships.
[4] VET courses in Australia are normally within Australian Qualification
Framework (AQF) levels 1-5.
[5] Training Packages are similar to NVQs in the UK.

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453
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THE JOURNAL OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

& TRAINING WELCOMES SUBMISSIONS

The Editorial Board of JVET welcomes the submission of good quality

articles from across the post compulsory sector of education and
training, whether from experts, academics or practitioners, in further or
higher education, or other public sector organisations. Bearing in mind
our international readership, we welcome reports of significant
developments in the field, research, book reviews, discussion articles on
topics of relevance to those working and studying in the sector, both in
the UK and overseas.

Suitable topics might include:

ƒ Social exclusion and the college response
ƒ Impact of the introduction of standards in basic skills for Further
Education teachers
ƒ Career development and progression for teachers in post compulsory
education
ƒ Impact of 14-19 initiatives on vocational education provision
ƒ Student perceptions of the post compulsory learning experience (e.g.
in relation to key skills)
ƒ Transferability of skills internationally
ƒ Impact of selected initiatives on post-16 curriculum
ƒ Role and mobility of senior managers in further education
ƒ Implications of the advent of learning and skills councils for funding
and management of colleges
ƒ Evaluation of specific developments, experiences or initiatives
overseas where implications can be drawn for practice or policy
elsewhere.

Information about the presentation and style of manuscripts can be found

in the Notes for Contributors, on the back cover of the journal. General
information about the journal, including past contents, can be found at
www.triangle.co.uk/VAE.

If you would like to discuss a proposed contribution with the Editor,

please contact Jaswinder Dhillon, School of Education, University of
Wolverhampton, Gorway Road, Walsall WS1 3BD, United Kingdom
(j.k.dhillon@wlv.ac.uk).

455
Erica Smith

Researching Policy and

Practice in Vocational
Education and Training
FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
University of Greenwich, London, 16-18 July 2003

The Journal of Vocational Education and Training’s fifth

international conference will take place at the Royal Naval College,
University of Greenwich, London, 16-18 July 2003. The cost for two
days’ residence and meals, including the conference dinner, will
be £240. Further details will be published later with the
registration forms and at www.triangle.co.uk/vae/05.htm

CALL FOR PAPERS

Papers on issues related to the conference theme will be
particularly welcomed but colleagues are encouraged to submit
proposals on any topic related to post-compulsory education and
training. Those wishing to contribute to the conference are asked
to email a 200 word abstract of their paper to
b.bailey@greenwich.ac.uk
Contributors whose papers are accepted will be asked to provide
a 2000 word summary of their paper for prior circulation to
conference members. Complete versions may then be submitted
for publication in the journal.

Further information is available from Bill Bailey at the email

address above or at School of Education and Training, University
of Greenwich, Park Row, London SE10 9LS, United Kingdom.
Phone +44 208 331 9240 Fax +44 208 331 9235

A PDF file of the colour poster for the 2003 conference can be
downloaded from www.triangle.co.uk/vae/conference2003.pdf

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