what is meant by 'training capacity'?

I received a heart warming response to recent media coverage regarding skill shortages in Tasmania from people offering to share their wealth of knowledge and experience with our youth.

While this is a really wonderful response, it highlights the lack of understanding of the requirements of our training system and what is meant by 'training capacity'.

Industry suggests that training has reached its capacity. It is difficult to increase the current numbers being trained due to the need for appropriately qualified and experienced employees to supervise and mentor apprentices, trainees or graduates and the limitations this places on the number of new entrants that can be trained.

When employers take on an apprentice, they are required to have a certain ratio of fully qualified people in the same discipline to train them on the job. For example an apprentice electrician will spend 4 years undertaking their apprenticeship which will involve ‘school’ and also on the job training by a fully qualified electrician. Therefore if employers do not have enough fully qualified electricians, they can not take on any additional apprentices.

The same situation exists for health care professionals ranging from extended care assistants to heart surgeons and also for accountants and engineers, chefs and plumbers.

Basically, what industry says is that they don’t have enough fully qualified and experienced people in specific occupations to take on any more apprentices/trainees or graduates that require on the job training, supervision and mentoring.