Summary of the Evaluation Skilled Trades Awareness and Readiness Program

About the program

• Launched in 2018, the Program encourages Canadians, particularly those facing barriers, to explore and prepare for careers in the skilled trades
• The Program targets equity-deserving groups, which include youth, women, Indigenous peoples, newcomers, persons with disabilities, and racialized communities
• The Program invested $36M in grants and contributions to fund 13 projects between 2018 to 2019 and 2021 to 2022

About the evaluation

• A formative evaluation to assess the Program design, delivery, and early results
• Scope: 13 funded projects from fiscal year 2018 to 2019 and 2021 to 2022
• Approach: multiple lines of evidence, including documents and file review, interviews with funding recipients and program officials, and focus groups with project participants

Key findings

• Project activities contributed to strengthening pre-apprenticeship across Canada. Types of activities in 2018 to 2019 and 2021 to 2022 included:
  • awareness activities: 69% of activities, 12,701 participants
  • skills training: 77% of activities, 3,072 participants
  • work experience: 46% of activities, 488 participants
• Almost all funding recipients were satisfied with the adequacy and timeliness of the funding they received.
• Incomplete information was collected over time to track performance measurement due to the absence of data on some indicators.
• The majority of participants reported that project activities helped prepare them to enter a skilled trade.

Recommendation

The Program performance measurement strategy should ensure the collection and reporting of relevant, accurate and coherent data and information, facilitated by the mandatory participation of funding recipients in the annual reporting process and data validation.