Eligibility and requirements

There are specific requirements governing school-based apprenticeships and traineeships (SATs).

They affect everyone involved in the partnership – students, parents and guardians, schools, training providers and employers.

Students

High school students must be in Year 10, 11 or 12. School-based apprentices in electrotechnology must be in Year 11 or 12.

Apprenticeships and traineeships can start before Year 10, but this requires a special business case. Contact Apprenticeships Info before commencing.

Learn more about:

Students must have:

support from their school
permission from their parent or guardian, if under 18.

Students living independently don't need permission from parents or guardians.

Students must be enrolled and/or registered in Years 10 to 12.

This includes students at state, catholic and independent schools, as well as distance education and home-schooled students.

Suspended students can still attend work and training.

To continue their apprenticeship or traineeship, excluded students must either:

re-enrol at another school and have the new school's support to continue with the school-based arrangement
change to a part-time arrangement (if the new school does not support the school-based arrangement).

Read more about being suspended or excluded from school.

There is a limit to the amount of training that school-based apprentices can do while they are at school. These limits ensure the apprentice has enough workplace skills to match the theoretical training they have undertaken with their training provider.

Learn more about these training limits for apprentices.

School-based apprenticeships and traineeships may be funded by the Queensland Government. Learn more about training costs.

Schools

Students must have their school's support to begin a SAT; not all schools support SATs.

If the school does not support a SAT, students may consider a part-time apprenticeship and traineeship while at school. Part-time apprenticeships and traineeships have different requirements.

Read about school-based versus part-time apprenticeships and traineeships.

Work and training must impact a student's school timetable in some way.

This can be achieved by either:

working during school hours
training during school hours.

Some students drop a subject(s) to allow time for work and/or training to occur during school hours.

Employers

Employers must:

provide at least 7.5 hours of paid work per week, averaged over every 3 months, for every 12 months of your training contract
provide at least 375 hours/50 days of paid employment (or 600 hours/80 days in electrotechnology industry) for every 12 months of your training contract
pay you for work, and possibly for time spent training with your training providers (depends on the industrial award or agreement which you are paid under).

Find out more about working hours.

Last updated:: 8 August 2025