Encouraging students to create their career pathway

Senior Project Officer Morgan Graham and Educational Pathways VET Ambassadors Jade Barrington and Imogen Young Maloney, encouraged Bourke High School students to explore the range of vocational education and training pathways available to them.

Story and photo by Beverley Callow

Students at Bourke High School had the opportunity to hear from members of the NSW Department of Education’s Educational Pathways VET Ambassador Program during a visit to Bourke last week.

Senior Project Officer Morgan Graham said the program aims to support students in exploring different career pathways by connecting them with young people who have completed vocational education and training (VET) and can share their real-life experiences.

“It’s all about meeting everyone where they’re at,” she said. “A lot of the time it’s just getting students to meet different people and ask questions such as: What is your career? What do you do? What is that like? What was surprising to you? What was difficult?”

VET Ambassador Jade Barrington, a Wandandian woman from the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community Council (WBACC) on the NSW South Coast spoke about the value of hands-on learning, saying that education is often “made to look one certain way in a school”, while vocational education allows students to learn by “seeing and doing things hands-on rather than just hearing about it.”

She said, “I got connected to this program after I won the 2022 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Student of the Year Award. […]

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