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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4195 ..

School-based apprenticeships are also part of our current teaching regime and can, in some cases, give young people access to an income, but a lot of vocational courses cost money to undertake and do not generate an income. So I think jobs skills training—and I’ve put forward the idea that it should happen for year 9 students–would fill an unmet need.

I first floated this idea last year and had quite positive feedback, but there were concerns raised with the initial proposal. The first was that we should not force young people into employment. My idea is to actually have this as voluntary. You can’t force young people into employment and you can’t necessarily force young people to take up training. That was never my intention. I’ve also heard concerns that job training would displace valuable classroom time teaching other essential skills that are now part of our curriculum.

So the suggestion I put forward today is that these courses are run outside of school time, that they’re run after school. This could be at any of those times that exist outside of school hours, be that after school, before school, at lunchtime, at weekends, over the school holidays. I think that running the courses independently of school would help reduce the impact of any stigma that may arise from kids feeling that they are being singled out for special treatment.

I use the term “at risk” because this Assembly and the government have put substantial effort into identifying disadvantaged young people who are the least likely to complete their education and less likely to find secure employment when they do stop studying. The recent young people’s plan actually mapped out the different stages of being at risk that young people can fall into. I’m not trying to set up a whole new set of criteria—that work has been done—and I can see this idea fitting quite well into the plans that are already there. Schools have the ability to work with these young people and know when extra support is required; so it’s just a question of tapping into the already established body of knowledge that exists.

I don’t believe that this will be an expensive proposal. There are community-based employment training providers who have the skills to run job skills workshops very cheaply and are quite excited about the idea of working with young people. Courses could cover a range of things, from resume preparation, interview and job-seeking skills, workplace safety laws, as well as teaching young people what employers expect in terms of dress and behaviour.

These are things that all seem second nature to us now but, for a young person who has never been in an employment situation, they are sometimes quite difficult things to pick up and learn. We do need to support young people who might not have those supports naturally to be able to deal with the situation of what it is like going to the first job interview, what it is like when you actually get a job and what is expected of you in terms of showing up on time, of how you deal with your co-workers and in some cases the public.

I think there is a great opportunity here for the Assembly to support this motion and, through it, support young people in the territory who are at great risk of falling into an unemployment cycle that could last their lifetimes and who are at risk of falling out of

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