Grant High School ended the last week of term two with a bang with its fourth annual Career Immersion Week which gives students schoolwide the opportunity to experience a range of industries.
The industry sectors explored included health and fitness, education and youth work, construction, machining (automotive and engineering combined), design and technology and animals and environment.
There are around 50 businesses, training organisations and universities involved in the Year 10 program alone which starts to expose students to more intensive hands-on training.
Grant High School powerful learning coordinator Shay Merrett is in charge of making sure students are focusing on higher order thinking skills such as critical thinking and teamwork through the initiative.
“Students in year levels are split up into groups and then they are thinking about problems within the community and how they can solve their problems or create a business depending on what year level they are in,” she said.
“They are developing those skills throughout the week.
“We also seek feedback around what we can do to further improve the program so for last year a lot of the students wanted hands on and more engaging activities, so we have been able to implement that within our programs this year.”
Grant High School coordinator of VET Pathways and Career Education Kelly Albanese said the program was initially introduced to increase attendance in the last week of term which has jumped as much as 40%.
“We were looking at a way to positively engage them with something outside of the normal curriculum,” she said.
“There is a big push within the Department for Education for entrepreneurial skills at the moment and particularly transferrable skills for students when they’re heading outside of school and into the workforce.
“At year 10 it is really easy for us in a way because they are right on the cusp of engaging with vocational education, school-based apprenticeships and traineeships.
“Our main focus is to connect them with industry and businesses in the community who are looking to employ.
“The focus is on observing the work environment and listening to guest speakers and getting an understanding of what skills they need.
“We have seen an increase in students undertaking work placement as a follow on from this program.”
Green Triangle Forest Industries Hub workforce development manager Josh Praolini is one of the many employers working with the high school to give students industry experience.
“We are really excited to be able to work with Grant High School and connect Grant High School to timber companies within our community,” he said.
“We are able to show a range of different careers and just sort of raise that profile and knowledge base so that kids are at this stage starting to think about work experience and subject choices.
“What we have been able to do by working with Grant on things like this is to have that really bespoke approach to the way in which we’re doing the immersion.
“For people entering the forestry industry it is an exciting time but for people in Mount Gambier especially as a centre of this research in the green triangle it is really, really exciting.”
Angus Work was one of the Grant High School Year 10 students involved in the machining sector through the Career Immersion Week.
Angus said he enjoyed learning about different industries within machining including forestry.
“The timber mills really provided some evidence on how things worked,” he said.
“I definitely had a different understanding (of what the forestry industry is).
“The industry can take you anywhere, a lot of important roles in it, lot of different roles to learn and it is a very knowledgeable space.”
