Students' Gateway to jobs

School students' access to work experience has traditionally been determined by social networks - who they, their parents, other relatives or friends know. That's tended to preserve an important transition tool between school and work for the well connected.

But the Tertiary Education Commission-sponsored Gateway programme, launched as a pilot in 2001, is changing the work experience experience. It's now less a case of who students know and more about what they know.

By last month 13,000 students and 6000 businesses had been involved in the programme that integrates schoolwork with structured workplace learning for senior students (Years 11 to 13, the old fifth, sixth and seventh form).

"Next year almost 9000 students from 298 schools will be on board, representing three quarters of all state and integrated secondary schools," said tertiary education Minister Michael Cullen last month when announcing an additional $8.1 million over four years to expand Gateway to all state and integrated schools. The programme, which will have a budget of $21 million in 2008/09, had been available only in decile one to six schools.

TEC policy group manager Susan Shipley said until Gateway arrived work experience had largely been an informal process and its availability and value varied from school to school, workplace to workplace. It was often only for less academic students. Sometimes students complained they did little more than sweep floors.

Cath O'Connell coordinates Gateway for three schools in South Waikato: Putaruru College, and Forest View and Tokoroa high schools.

"It's often called structured work experience," O'Connell said. "The students aren't just going out on an ad hoc basis. It's a formalised arrangement between the employers and schools. The students have to meet two criteria - be enrolled at school, and achieve a minimum of 10 credits (on NCEA). So, it's not a day for goofing off."

O'Connell stresses the seriousness of the experience to students who are being "invited to step into the world of work".

While most schools apply individually to the TEC for the funding the South Waikato schools cluster was created in recognition of the district's small business community.

In the first two years 176 students took part; this year 105 are expected. Around 70 employers ranging from agriculture, veterinary science, and engineering firms to hospitality, hairdressing, nursing, and tourism companies make their workplaces available.

"One of the good things to come out of Gateway is that closer links are developing between the schools and business community. Also, schools are adapting or changing their courses in response to industry's needs," O'Connell said.

One employer explained that good maths and English and an aptitude for car mechanics was no longer enough when today's cars might have up to 30 computer components and fixing them meant using highly technical and expensive diagnostic equipment.

Gateway showed students that besides the often better known paths to tertiary education they could look for work opportunities locally, she said.

"Students usually go out on placement one day a week for six weeks or, for example, a student working in the tourism industry will be working from 1pm to 5pm because that's a busy time. A student who wanted to learn to milk cows went two afternoons a week from 2pm to 6pm."

Sometimes they learn what they don't want.

"Some students are really focussed on what they want to do but when they finish their placement they decide they don't want to do that at all.

"That's a good outcome too. [It means] students don't have this dream and maybe leave school, enrol in a course and find it isn't for them."

Huge changes occurred in students once they had had "the reality check" of a real workplace, O'Connell said: "They often return to school really refocused about what they need to do to get to the next step. The experience of having to behave like an adult and be treated like one is huge. We see an increase in confidence."

O'Connell believes Gateway is also addressing a local need for skilled trade staff. The Kinleith mill maintenance company had regularly taken students interested in engineering and electrical technology. Another engineering firm local to the schools had offered an apprenticeship to a student who had done work experience with the company.

Shipley said the TEC had been surprised at the rapid uptake of the programme, which was now used widely by students with a broad range of capabilities and interests to "test out careers".

"There's more attention to the learning experience. Students can use it as a launch pad into a career but more than half go on to further study. They shop around."