Cancellation of indigenous Australians from the apprenticeship training contract

Abstract

The vocational education and training (VET) sector is a major pathway to post‐school education for indigenous students, yet questions are being raised about the capacity of the VET system to provide successful outcomes for the indigenous apprentices and trainees it attracts. Within a system plagued by high cancellation rates in general, indigenous apprentices appear to do particularly badly. This paper combines data from an administrative database on apprenticeship with income data from the 2001 Census of Population and Housing to provide an analysis of attrition rates for apprenticeship training contracts in Queensland, asking: Are cancellation rates for indigenous students significantly higher than those for non‐indigenous students, and, if so, what factors are responsible for this?