Year 10 students at St Augustine's College attended the Melbourne Urban Camp to experience university life.
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St Augustine’s College is expanding students’ horizons beyond the classroom, reintroducing a popular career's camp to broaden future opportunities.
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While school excursions are common, the specially designed Melbourne Urban Camp offers Year 10 students a unique opportunity to envision their future careers and life paths.
Headed by deputy principal - student learning and professional practice Brad Downie and Year 9 to 12 well being leader and careers practitioner Michelle Downie, the cohort of 68 kids bussed into Melbourne’s concrete jungle from April 30 to May 2 to experience what university life is like.
Mr Downie said it was a chance for students to explore their options, see courses in action, before they choose subjects, consider prerequisites and begin paving their career pathways.
“We’re supporting the students to explore a variety of tertiary, vocational and training institutions that they may not previously have had the chance to experience,” he said.
Students are able to select which educational settings they want to explore, from institutions like including Melbourne University, Victoria University, Australian Catholic University, RMIT, White House Institute of Design, William Angliss Institute, Bendigo’s Kangan TAFE and La Trobe Bendigo.
Year 10 students at St Augustine's College attended the Melbourne Urban Camp to experience university life.
Photo by
Contributed
“We don’t want to lock them in or pigeon hole them into any particular area – we want them to get a sense of what is out there, what’s available, the different pathways and study and career options they may want to pursue,” Mrs Downie said.
Mrs Downie said the camp fell in line with the approach that St Augustine’s takes in encouraging their students to think proactively about their futures.
“We run a careers program from Years 8 to 7, all the way to Year 12, that exposes students to work and gets them to think about their interests, their likes and delve a bit deeper into who they are,” she said.
In Years 7 and 8, there are dedicated careers classes designed to get students thinking about their future, and in Year 9, career exploration and enterprise experiences are introduced – exposing students to the world of work.
Year 10 marks the beginning of an intensive career preparation journey, featuring the Urban Camp, work experiences, specialised classes, and careers expos in Years 11 and 12 to explore specific future pathways.
“We’ve got so many varied experiences after school from students who have gone onto to successful pathways such as apprenticeships, full-time employment, and post school education,” Mrs Downie said.
“We’re just as proud of our apprentices as we are of our university graduates, because it means they have created a meaningful pathway for themselves.”
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