Tamworth: Belmore Engineering and Obieco Industries working with schools to land apprentices

At least, giving high school students access to a real workshop produced positive results for Belmore Engineering, admin and finance manager Emma Carrigan said.

The steel fabrication workshop offers a schools program called Flash Starts, getting students up close and personal to engineering.

Dressed in the correct PPE, students get the opportunity to get on the tools themselves, doing some welding and grinding, and going home with a firepit.

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Belmore Engineering aims to put on four apprentices every year, and three came from the Flash Starts program.

The company has 12 apprentices on the roster, and aims to have 16 at the end of four years.

While the goal is to retain apprentices, some employees and apprentices get to the end of their training and decide they want something different, Ms Carrigan said.

The number of people commencing apprenticeships dropped 38.5 per cent to 6905 in the 2022 September quarter, compared to the same quarter in 2021, NSW data from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research found.

The number of trainees that cancelled and withdrew rose 34.1 per cent to 9955, and there were 117,570 in training overall, which was up 8.0 per cent on the 2021 September quarter.

"I think through COVID, things dropped off a little bit with that intake of apprentices, we didn't have the work experience opportunities because of COVID," Ms Carrigan said.

"But since then, we've picked up the ball again and increased our presence, with that schools program and with the schools around the local area.

"We like to make sure that they're passionate about the industry, we find that if that interest is there, they will most likely stay, and stick out the apprenticeship."

In 2021, there was a slight dip in completions for NSW students across all registered training organisations, a TAFE NSW spokeswoman said, and the COVID-19 lockdowns interrupted face-to-face training for apprentices.

Obieco Industries works closely with schools to find students interested in trades and get them into hands-on work experience, head of HR Fiona Sweeney said.

"Because of the overall worker shortage, we're certainly really focusing on our training program now, and to secure that interest at a much earlier stage," she said.

An eight week, work ready productivity bootcamp will come to the country music capital in February, general manager of the productivity group Paddy Hore has confirmed.

"It's going to be an exciting next six to 12 months, because realistically, we have to do something different," Ms Sweeney said.

"At the end of the day, the local businesses here, we're all trying to attract from the same pool of potential apprentices."

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