By CASEY NEILL
Educators and businesses each think the other is responsible for forging employment pathways for students.
“That suggests there’ll be some young people falling through those cracks and not getting those employability skills,” Jennifer Ebdon said.
She and fellow school and community development officer Mary Tresize-Brown launched a report on the issue at the South East Local Learning and Employment Network (SELLEN) AGM at its new Langhorne Street headquarters in Dandenong on Thursday 2 June.
SELLEN was established in 2001 to bring together educators, employers, industry, welfare agencies, local government and non-government organisations.
The focus is giving 10 to 19-year-olds a better go at successfully moving through the education system to employment.
CEO Andrew Simmons said funding had been a major challenge for SELLENs over the past few years.
“A change of state government has brought with it the promise of four years of funding for LLEN (Learning and Employment Networks) core contracts,” he said.
“The confirmation of funding for LLENs out to 2019 has provided some security to programs and staffing.”
Mr Simmons said SELLEN was involved in developing many programs, initiatives and partnerships last year.
These included the Young Parents Education Program at Cranbourne Secondary College, adding 173 new employers to its contact suite, and delivering a training awareness program to 150 at-risk young people.
Mr Simmons said SELLEN was also involved in more than 40 networks, steering groups and taskforces, “providing further support to like-minded organisations and initiatives in the region and across the state”.
“These relationships allow us to have an influence on many issues that impact young people, particularly those living within the SELLEN region,” he said.
Ms Tresize-Brown said consultation for the Business and Education Interaction in South-East Melbourne report across Greater Dandenong, Casey and Cardinia started about 12 months ago and included 20 businesses from several sectors and 20 educators.
“We asked them very simple questions … centred around how they interact with each other,” she said.
She and Ms Ebdon wanted to find out what worked for each party, she said, with the goal of finding out how to create a win-win-win situation for employer, school and student.
“We will take the report back to the 20 schools and 20 businesses,” she said.
In July they plan to use the report to start a conversation about easily bringing schools and businesses together.
Ms Ebdon said work experience was the most common way educators and businesses interacted.
But some schools have done away with the program, she said, because it was too time-consuming and not valuable enough.
Some employers also said they “preferred to have students who had been on that journey, decided what pathway they wanted to go down and could come to the workplace already focused”.
Ms Ebdon said many businesses didn’t know how to connect to educators, and vice-versa.
“There is untapped potential out there in the business community that we can harness,” she said.
“It’s time for the stakeholders to come together and map a new way forward.”
She said the report also found that some schools thought they didn’t need to prepare students on an ‘academic path’ for work.
“For every student, regardless of the pathway that they take, their ultimate destination is a workplace,” Ms Ebdon said.
