Have you seend the 23rd December 2010 letter from the ITO announcing the new fees for apprentices come 1 April 2011.  At present fees are $6000 - this is set to rise to $8800!  Around a 30% increase.  How the hell can this be justified?  There has been an increase in GST - fair enough - but the ITO are claiming  they are providing increased resources (textbooks, inclusion of standards, new distance learning materials) increase in material costs, incrase in provider costs and general increases including GST and more direct contract and support from regional staff to help apprentices get finished on time.

Well if you train apprentices - how much increase have you seen in support from regional staff?  I haven't seen any, in fact I don't see regional staff at all!  I think we all appreciated that there would need to be some increase but not a whopping 30%.  It's not as if the level of service received from this organisation is stellar - they are left wanting a lot of the time.  As employers it's hard to get firm dates for block courses from the, the distance learning material has holes in it with some questions that are impossible to answer or are just plain wrong - so the quality control is lacking.  I appreciate TEC have come down hard on the ITO about completion times - and it's been a long time coming - but have the ITO really explored efficiencies in their office.  For example - where do the ITO Board have their strategic planning sessions - at the ITO office in rooms already paid for?  NO.  Does the CEO make wonderful promises to organisations about handing over donations - e.g. at the opening of the new Weltec plumbing workshops he dropped $1k of ITO money as a donation - and I don't believe this is the first time this has happened.  Do the ITO have (either permanently or from time to time) a box at the Westpac Stadium - and if so how is this justified???  You can't tell me inviting a potential employer to be a guest of the ITO at the Stadium is going to entice someone to hire an apprentice.  The best way to target government funding for apprenticeships is to pay it direct to the employer as a subsidy paid in increments as the apprentice moves through their apprenticeship.


Linkback: https://www.plumbers.nz/apprenticeships/78/increases-to-apprenticeship-training-fees/565/

hi jax/guys, i have read your posts and am concerned as you are so i have sent your posts to my local M.P. asking for Nationals view of these changes, i am sure that in election year he will be worried. All we can do is put pressure in areas that may produce results i hope you will do the same. I will post the reply if i get one,cheers

hi jax, have already done it and have had a reply that M.Ps office is closed untill 17.1.11. so will wait, for an official reply,cheers

   Yeah right Mike!!  Apprentices still make mistakes and cost money - especially that first year.  The costs are now horrendous - I hope most employers and apprentices can work it out together - in the past our company fully paid and then we got sick of our trained guys getting poached as soon as they finished their time, so we moved to a 50/50 arrangement and we still saw poaching or them leaving to go overseas as soon as they were trained, so now we pay 50% 12 months after completion of the National Certificate - so if they stay for a year after their apprenticeship is finished they get a cheque for $3k.  Unfortunately as a firm that usually has 5 - 8 apprentices all the time (we have a ratio of 1 - 1 with Certifiers) we are seriously considering flagging it for a while as the costs are just too high - especially with the market as it is at the moment when you can pick up registered staff reasonably easily.

I think the timing of the letter going out was deliberate - it arrived over the holidays and the ITO office was shut.  It will get buried in the holiday mail and not get the due consideration it should.  We run the risk of only having kids whose parents can afford to pay the fee coming into this trade.  Numbers will tell the story in the end.

Hi Robbo
The problem we experience is that we have always trained apprentices - we have a staff of just under 30 and therefore have a wages structure through from trainees (who we start on minimum wage) up to certifiers.   Our fully trained apprentices with National Certificate and just sat their registration exams were being offered $26 + per hour.  If I paid this for just trained apprentices then I would be looking at $28 - $30 for experienced registered guys and over $30 for certifiers.  The market won't take this - and because we do a lot of large commercial work a job can be 3 years long with a fixed price. 

I think the market will have dropped back a bit judging by the number of tradesmen I get ringing here looking for work - unheard of a few years ago.  However I would be interested to see what pay rates are looking like around the country. 

I do agree - however hourly rate is only one component, there is the matter of upskilling and who pays and how that is treated by the company your work for, also licences and whether a company still pays overtime, meal allowances etc.  In reality it is the 'package" deal - and that package is getting more and more expensive by the minute, while main contractors are searching for cheaper jobs all the time because the client believes that prices have gone down in this market!      Welcome to 2011 - more of the same - but worse!