Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

As I thought was fairly obvious from the name of the program that this scheme is funded under, this is the alternative delivery pilots program. The five different models that are being funded are indeed pilots of alternative delivery models that look at non-traditional approaches for the delivery of training that leads to a final qualification. So it is self-evident that these are trialling different pathways, different approaches. That is exactly what the model is designed to do across the five different programs that are being funded. That is absolutely why we are looking at it. As I told the Senate yesterday, it is because we saw in the period between 2012 and 2013 a 38 per cent reduction in apprenticeship commencements, a 38 per cent decline that has continued to flow through apprenticeship numbers in Australia. We are trialling these different pilot programs in an undertaking to try to ascertain whether there are ways to recover those apprenticeship numbers in the future.