Winter 2007

Careers and transition

The worlds of work

Education Foundation Australia’s City Centre unlocks the learning potential of the city and introduces young people to new worlds beyond the classroom. Rosalyn Black reports on a success story.

If we want a quantum leap in educational performance, we must be prepared to think more radically, and to develop young people’s capacity to learn in society, rather than at one removed from it

Tom Bentley, Department of Premier and Cabinet

The City Centre (…) changed the way our year 10 students do work experience. For the first time, we’ve had kids in city offices, not just in the Broadmeadows’ Bi-Lo. Our students now see themselves as part of the wider world, not just part of Broadmeadows

Teacher

Education Foundation Australia is a national, independent, non-profit organisation that provides resources, role models and real-life learning opportunities to engage and inspire young people in public schools. In 2003, the Foundation opened its City Centre in Melbourne for years 9 and 10 students from government schools. The Centre caters for 3500 students each year, with a particular focus on schools located in disadvantaged communities.

The City Centre is a classroom without walls that turns the city into a site for independent learning. Its curriculum is based on authentic research tasks that require complex thought, cooperation, communication and negotiation, and are connected to the real world of the Melbourne Central Business District. It includes a strong focus on learning about the world of work.

Compared to other OECD countries, Australia continues to have high numbers of young people not in education, training or employment. While schools and career advisory organisations help students get in to the world of work, there is an enormous gap in the skills and knowledge provided to young people for getting on in the complex, networked and changing environment of the global world of work. Real world learning is one key.

Despite the growing globalisation of numerous facets of Australian life, a disturbing number of young people rarely venture beyond their own neighbourhood. Disadvantage creates a range of economic, social and cultural exclusions that begin during the school years. A new research report by the Foundation, Crossing The Bridge: Overcoming Entrenched Disadvantage through Student-Centred Learning, quotes one principal of a school only 20 kilometres from the heart of Melbourne who says, ‘our students never cross the bridge out of this suburb’. Many of these students come to the end of their formal education or training with little understanding of the opportunities that may be available beyond their local community.

Education Foundation Australia believes that children cannot be properly educated unless their learning includes an understanding of the wider world and prepares them for an active role in that world. The City Centre works with a range of organisations to support independent student learning in CBD workplaces. They include leading global and national corporations such as Goldman Sachs JBWere, Credit Suisse First Boston, Booz Allen Hamilton, Boston Consulting Group, Macquarie Bank, National Australia Bank, Coles Myer, Freehills, Rio Tinto, Challenger, Cadbury Schweppes and Connell Wagner. These organisations recognise their capacity to enlarge and add value to young people’s learning and connect them to the opportunities represented by the CBD.

Across the globe, people are recognising that cities have the capacity to maximise learning that is critical in order to thrive socially, economically and culturally. The City Centre is now at the heart of a new Education Foundation Australia initiative, ‘Worlds of Work’, which will help Melbourne become a learning city.

It is a five-day program for year 9 students.

Creating learning workplaces

Worlds of Work invites CBD-based organisations to apply for recognition as Learning City Friendly Workplaces. To be eligible, an organisation must:

• welcome young people into its world and help invent new ways of engaging them in the workplace
• be interested in making itself accessible and intelligible to young people and willing to invest staff time towards this end
• recognise that more than half of the jobs that will exist in 10 years do not yet exist
• listen to the voice of young people
• be child safe.

Skilling students for the workplace

Worlds of Work involves students in workshops that provide training in some of the essential skills of the modern workplace such as formal communication and presentation skills.

Classroom to Boardroom

Senior company executives host students in their own boardrooms in a component called ‘Classroom to Boardroom’. They introduce students to the operations of the company, explain the range of career pathways available within their organisation and their industry and discuss the decision-making processes that take place in the company boardroom. Classroom to Boardroom gives students a unique insight into the corporate environment. It seeds new ideas about career and life possibilities, helps them understand the dynamics and challenges of the world of work and provides them with excellent role models to whom they are otherwise not exposed.

An insight into a working life

Students independently organise, conduct and record interviews with company employees about their weekly work experience, their career pathways and the qualities they need to be successful at work. These include positive thinking and learned optimism.

Worlds of Work pilot

The Worlds of Work pilot is being conducted in the second half of 2007. Ten schools will participate.

For more information about the City Centre go to www.thecitycentre.org.au

For more information about Education Foundation Australia visit www.educationfoundation.org.au

Rosalyn Black is the research manager of Education Foundation Australia.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au