Victoria has VCAL as well as VCE, where young people do classes through TAFE that can be part of an apprenticeship. I'm not fully up on the details, but one person i know works at the childcare centre one day a week, has classes at the TAFE and classes at the high school, and it really works for her. Another couple of kids do it in building, and woodwork/carpentry (he is a chippie), so there are a few different options.

Maybe this is the reason for the raise in age, so young people can start their apprenticeship straight from school and don't leave school out of frustration and then be stuck with nothing do until they aquire an apprenticeship.
I did VCAL. in year 11 and year 12. for me it was school monday, tuesday part of wednesday and part of friday. thursday was my 'work day' year 11 i did two jobs one was in a hotel kitchen, the other a helping hand in a family run bakery, plus i also had a 'personal job' at the same time. i also had to do a personal project and another project - i cant think of the name of it right now. year 12 i did the same, but my work was in Cafe Kitchen. by the end of year 12 i was working thursday, some firdays saterdays and some mondays so around the 30hr mark. I also did Tafe on wednesdays in cookery. Vcal is a good thing provided you have an idea of what you want to do (mind you i was the only VCAL student at my school, so i didnt have much leeway in it) but the only down side for me was being the only one doing it - seeing the 'out side world' before the rest of my class mates, knowing that after a 12hr + day i had school at 8:30 the next morning, but it was the best thing for me as i wanted to leave school to become a chef (im now a Pro. family cook )but it kept me on the path i wanted to be on and wouldnt change it for the world.

as for raiseing the school leavers age - i'd question that. if some one wanted to leave at 15, with the right support (my careers teacher was worth her weight in gold and then some) they could make it work. i think that if the government also had a way of helping (not so much with $$ but with finding work IE apprenticeship for school leavers who wanted them) it may work -as others have said we need more tradies. My dad put it really well once "Howard wanted every tom, d!c.k and harry to go to Uni and get some kind of "higher education there" but he forgot that we need Tradies to build the buildings they sit in, someone to wire up the buildings they use so they dont get fried and some one to make sure that their sh*t wont end up flowing onto their shoes, and now we have no one wanting to get their hands dirty because of it we all suffer, every one 'cept howard" (this is going back when i was in year 12, so '06) I also think that at 17/18 knowing what you want to be for the rest of your life is not an easy thing to work out, considering how exxy some corse fees can be (mine wasnt too bad around $700, but thats just the corse, not the uniform, knifes, books ect) to start something and find out you hate it can be an expensive venture. many of the girls i went to high school with are *still* trying to figer that part out. which for some means a HEX or what ever its called debit will be a large one once they work out what they want to do.

...well thats my :2cents: