Pre-apprenticeships are becoming an increasingly important component of the Australian vocational education and training (VET) system. The purpose of this report is to investigate the level of pre-apprenticeship activity occurring in Australia and to examine the characteristics of pre-apprenticeship courses and the students undertaking those courses. With the absence of a pre-apprenticeship identifier in the National VET Provider Collection, the authors' approach was to compile a list of possible pre-apprenticeship courses and to examine the associated activity from the National VET Provider Collection. The pre-apprenticeship courses were identified through a keyword search of course names and responses to requests to state and territory contacts to provide lists of pre-apprenticeship courses. A Western Australian dataset with a pre-apprenticeship identifier was also available. Key findings include: (1) Pre-apprenticeship training in Australia is an important--and growing--component of the Australian VET sector, with an estimated 64,800 course enrolments in 2009; (2) Enrolments in pre-apprenticeship courses are within two main fields of education--engineering and related technologies, and architecture and building; (3) Pre-apprenticeship courses are providing an important pathway for disadvantaged students, such as Indigenous students, early school leavers and those without non-school qualifications; and (4) Pre-apprenticeship courses are providing good further study outcomes, with 43.5% of graduates going onto further study, compared with 32.1% of all VET graduates. Appended are: (1) List of Victorian pre-apprenticeship courses; (2) List of South Australian pre-apprenticeship and prevocational courses; and (3) Total number of course enrolments in pre-apprenticeship courses. (Contains 23 tables and 2 footnotes.)