At a time when property managers are looking for (or at least should be) building service contractors to have more skilled cleaning teams on their sites, federal and state governments have brought in significant changes to Australia’s training ‘system’, which now places the financial onus on contractor employers.
At the time of writing, post the Federal Government budget initiatives, more information from various organisations involved in training was filtering through.
Part-time Australian Apprenticeships will no longer attract the Commencement and the Recommencement employer incentives under the Program. The Completion Incentive will be reduced to $1,500 for this cohort and until this week there was a Commencement payment of $1,500.
“There is still some funding for part-timers but it’s now $1,500 on completion instead of $4,000 as previous,” noted Lennox Institute CEO Elaine Lennox.
“But cleaners have to be working 21 hours to sign into certificate III as there is no funding for certificate II anymore. So it still cuts many cleaners out and employers will have to pay more than $1,500 for the training… so it’s no longer ‘cash flow positive’,” she explained.
There are now no employer incentives for Diploma or Advanced Diploma training courses; no state funding available for them; and employers and/or individuals will need to fund that training.
All existing part-time traineeships and diploma courses have to be completed by June 2013 in order to secure the Completion payment.
While it’s been acknowledged the previous training system has been abused by some industries and individual employers, these radical changes can only be detrimental to the cleaning industry’s educational quest and, of course, to RTOs dependent on the cleaning industry.