Feature
Inspiring young people to
aspire to exciting futures
Kellie Lyneham Head of Senior School
Careers education has always played an important role in the Senior School at Carey, and recently I had the opportunity to sit down with our three expert careers practitioners, Amanda Siva, Trevor Black and Sophie Bryant, to hear more about their focus and the passions that drive their work with our Senior School students. Kellie: Tell us a little bit about careers education and its place in the education of a whole person. Amanda: Quality careers education is about creating opportunities for students to know themselves, know their world and manage their own future. Australia’s National Career Strategy argues that careers education helps students develop the skills and knowledge they need to make informed decisions about education and work, while also contributing to their selfconfidence, school engagement and educational outcomes. Our goal at Carey is to move beyond the traditional careers programs and tap into our broad offerings to inspire our students to be more confident about their postschool options. Kellie: Why is careers education such an important part of the Carey Senior School experience? Sophie: We know that the nature of work is changing. Young people are 14 | Torch
finding it harder to secure full-time work and they want career guidance that is tailored to their individual circumstances and gives them the skills required to navigate this new world of work. This includes helping them to develop the attributes valued by employers – resilience, emotional intelligence, creative thinking, agility and leadership. Embedding career exposure into our programs and highlighting transferrable skills and attribute development will allow students to see the value in what they are learning at school. Kellie: What is your vision for careers education at Carey? Trevor: We hope to inspire our young people to aspire to new and exciting futures. We want to build a career education program that is authentic and embedded within each subject area, but also provides opportunities for exposure to experiences that push students out of their comfort zone. This is a program where students can experience work, develop their nonacademic skills, identify opportunities for themselves beyond school and expand their career horizons. Ultimately, we want to build in students the capacity to own their journey and drive their own success. Kellie: What’s been happening in the last few years in this space?
Amanda: In the last few years, we have refined and expanded some of our programs and offerings as we move towards our vision. It starts at Year 10, when students have individual careers interviews to discuss their aspirations help them choose courses and subjects that will suit them. We also host a Year 10 Pathways Planning Day to provide them with the opportunity to really think about their future pathways. We have also reintroduced Work Experience to the Year 10 program, giving students the opportunity to explore the world of work – you can read more about it in the following article. For all Senior School students and parents, we have developed an online careers hub so they have ready access to helpful information, and we are working on strengthening our relationship with our Alumni network and will continue to draw on their support as guest speakers, mentors and work experience hosts. Finally, we are excited to be working on the Learner Profile trial with a small group of Year 12 students whose unique skills and abilities may not be recognised by their ATAR. This group will be working towards a Learner Profile which we hope will more accurately describe their strengths and attributes and help capture all that they are.
