From the Careers Department

National Skills Week at Saint Ignatius’ College

It's National Skills Week! This week we celebrate vocational learning, the value of hands-on skills, and the career pathways they lead to! This is a week whereby we show off some of serious skills available to our students through VET by hosting several events to celebrate VET and the amazing careers that VET can take you. On Tuesday Bhu from Adelaide Institute of Hospitality demonstrated to a hungry crowd of students how to make chocolate brownies with instant ice cream. The students were especially impressed with the use of liquid nitrogen to create the ice cream. On Wednesday students heard from Liam and Lily from SARAH where they learnt about the wide variety of careers in Construction, ranging from HR, accounting, trades to Project Management, in particular the roles involved in building our new Arts and Technology building. A group of lucky students were then treated to a behind the scenes tour of the building. Finally on Thursday the Year 11’s heard from the Housing Industry of Australia’s Born to Build and Old Scholar Eloise Fry. This session was an overview of a variety of trades with a focus on breaking the stereotypes of the typical “tradie”. Students were informed about Australian labour market trends, forecasts for growth, incomes and skill shortages. Students were surprised at the growth in wages for skilled trades, such as concreters who average $100,000 a year. Eloise spoke of her journey as a non-traditional carpenter and her experiences in a male dominated industry, hopefully inspiring our girls to follow her into this pathway.

Keep an eye out on the College Socials for some real-life examples of Old Ignatians Gianni Barone (Electrotechnology) and Hugo Porter (Carpentry) smashing it in trades post school!

Professor Peter Shergold’s webinar on the importance of VET:

“Too often our students are persuaded that there exists some profound demarcation between higher education on the one hand and vocational on the other, simplistically between universities and TAFEs, between formal study and workplace learning. And that approach, driven by the fact that ATAR is generally but mistakenly perceived as a measure of high school success, results in students being seen to believe that certain pathways into employment have more value than others." - Professor Peter Shergold.

Watch the full webinar recording with Professor Peter Shergold and gain more powerful insights: https://lnkd.in/gJqqGntT

Career Industry Council of Australia’s Youtube channel

CICA have created a range of excellent videos about the importance of Vocational Learning and how it can be used to gain important vocational skills. Click here to view their videos.

Lisa McDonald
Vocational Services Coordinator