By the time Ro Lyon finishes her four-year apprenticeship as a Cert III in Electrotechnology it may have spanned five years.
That’s because Ro has met with countless delays in booking spaces in the classroom to get her assessment side of the apprenticeship done.
“I started off in Victoria in the public training service. I was told I’d have to wait three months to start, but after three months there wasn’t any news,” explains Ro.
“One phone call I was transferred to seven people. They all said they’d get back to me soon and explained there was a shortage of teachers so they couldn’t start a new class. I was getting nowhere so after another two months I asked to transfer to a private company. It was a lot of paperwork but eventually I was ready to start work.”
It took Ro from January to mid-November to be able to transfer from organisation to another for her training. But once she had, she was doing well and enjoying her apprenticeship, that is until May 2024 when she decided to relocate to Brisbane.
“This time I thought, I’ll go private and there shouldn’t be any problems – I was wrong,” she explains.
“While in Victoria you go to college one day a week and the other four you are on the job site – up here you book in blocks of learning. The problem is there isn’t any availability when you call to book them in. It took them 12 months to get me booked into my first block of classroom training.”
Instead Ro is left stuck at the same progression stage in her apprenticeship for longer than she should be.
“If I have any further delays it will have spanned five years in total to get my apprenticeship. That has a knock-on effect for me financially. There’s also not the guarantee of a job once I finish my contract so I just hope my host employer will keep me on until I can do my capstone. It is a worry.”
