teresa green,
I'm an ex APS that specialised in apprenticeship training. After getting the flick on my 55th birthday, I spent the next 10 years working for a Group Training Organisations that I set up while in the APS!!!!. My job was setting up a Registered Training Organisation to train the apprentices - (Adelaide's PEER VEET is a joint GTO and RTO that trains over 500 plumbing, electrical, electronic and refrigeration apprentices for the services industries). Most of the Trainers and Assessors used by PEER VEET are ex DCA, DSTO and Aircraft trained Tradespersons who had been 'flicked' by the former DCA and aircraft shops.
From the early 1980s, there was a decision by companies and government 'beancounters' to withdraw from 'direct' apprenticeship training effort.
As a result, the number of apprentices being trained dropped dramatically. Companies that had industrial and commercial advantage and high intellectual proprietorship capability were suddenly without a continuing skilled workforce.
The organisations' capacity to 'compete' was lost and with it all the skill base of the organisations was seriously compromised.
Bean counters, to justify their existence, shut down their Australian production capacity and sourced the organisation's products and services from overseas.
The companies have never really recovered and the beancounters, realising that their worth in the organisation is now not sufficiently rewarded, pick up their lunch boxes and move to another organisation and do the same to them.
I call bean counters 'parasites on society'.
Mike