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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4201 ..

Together with Mr Pratt, I recently had the pleasure of visiting a class of students at Deakin High School who perhaps normally would not attend school, who would fall into this category of struggling to get work, or even to stay at school to learn the skills necessary for work. They were undertaking a practical class. I commend Deakin High School and the government for working on programs such as that. I note that it was Deakin High School—to give them a bit of a hooray for the day—that in the late 1990s led the way in piloting the “adopt a school” program. I had the pleasure of working very closely with Deakin High School at that time in setting up that program. They set a bit of a standard in the area. I am not sure if that program still goes on. I think I have heard the minister mention it at some stage in here.

That is a program where the school and students engage with local businesses, for example, to undertake work experience, to develop the very things that Ms Dundas is suggesting. I think, Mr Speaker, you will remember that, in the last Assembly, we had a trip to Victoria with the education committee to see what was being done in the area of helping students in a similar category with vocational education and training. When we can engage students in a practical area, they are often then more likely to want to learn the academic side of things.

We were shown some very fine examples of assisting young people at risk, who perhaps do not fit into the usual school situation. Some excellent programs are being run to assist young people in the category of students at risk of dropping out of school, students with difficult home lives, students with addictions and so on. The minister talked about all those as well, as did Ms Dundas. All these factors, of course, are contributors to young people perhaps having difficulty in gaining the necessary work/life skills which make the difference between them getting a job or not.

Ms Tucker talked about indigenous students at risk and innovative programs being used there. Again, it was the practical aspect of vocational education training. There are many entry and exit points within vocational education training which make it good for these young people to pick up modules of learning when they need them. I think Ms Tucker mentioned after-school programs being a bit of a concern as well.

For reasons that I agree with, it would be good to work through that and try and incorporate some of that stuff into the working school day. Students may not want to stay at school, or they may need to leave to babysit or perform other caring roles within the family. But, as Ms Dundas points out—and I had not thought about this—it is also worthy of note that they may enjoy staying back at school because that is their support unit.

Ms Dundas said that vocational education training in schools is geared towards full-time employment, but I would not necessarily agree with that. I think there is an avenue for that but I also think that vocational education training sets a young person up with skills for life. We are now talking about lifelong learning, and getting the young people in the group of students she is talking about on track for lifelong learning.

I have referred to most of the things other speakers have said. I think the minister said that there are many definitions of “students at risk”. I would agree with that—and certainly that we tailor programs. We talked about new apprenticeships, pathways

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