The Wanganui City College/Rob O'Keeffe Joinery Ltd Link
The principal's perspective – Brian Woolhouse
Relevence/value
"From my perspective, I've become increasingly aware of the need to cater for a large number of our students by thinking outside the formal academic structure. Developing links with our local polytechnics and the business community and determining and developing the skills required for our students to succeed in those links, are critical. Any links are going to be of benefit to our students, many of whom, after all, are inevitably going on to tertiary study and/or work in industry, local or otherwise.”
"We talk a lot to our students about being good citizens – about being reliable, about being able to get on with people, about having the basic skills and general knowledge that will help them bridge that gap between school and employment. And by linking the classroom programmes to the community, students come to recognise just how much the community values those attributes – it reinforces what we are telling them in school.”
"From our school's perspective these links not only open up opportunities for our students, but also change the approach that our teachers have as well. That's one of the things that will be critical in the future. The curriculum needs to be opened up and expanded, and what better way than to link with local businesses and enterprises to make the curriculum much more relevant for our students.”
Manageability
"It's becoming increasingly difficult to manage the range of links involved across the school. We've become heavily involved in programmes such as 'Gateway' and 'Transition to work' and there is a cost – in terms of student time and in terms of continuity of lessons within the school. To ensure the continuity of our teaching programmes we have looked at strategies such as restricting the release of students for such extra-classroom activities to two specified days a week, so that the rest of the teaching programme can continue smoothly and the students can build up their NCEA credits. But again, we've got to balance that."
"I think there are other things that need to be addressed as well. We need to step away from our formal 9am-3pm curriculum, and start to expand that so that students go to these businesses from 3pm to 5pm, say, or maybe on a Saturday. But again, we've got balance that – with sport, with culture, with outdoor education. And I believe it is possible to achieve that balance.”
Sustainability
"In schools we are becoming much clearer about our processes and our expected outcomes, and how to report those outcomes so that they are meaningful and justifiable in terms of the extra time and effort required. In classroom programmes where we are making these links we stress the need to clearly identify the objectives, the main methods of delivery, the signposts and evaluation processes so that we can be sure that what we are involved in doing is actually adding value to our students.”
"Local groups like Wanganui Incorporated have an important brokering role for these links. There must be many businesses gems in Wanganui that we're largely unaware of in schools, companies that could in fact be linking with us. I can think of the big companies, but there are other little businesses out there where good innovative work is being done that our students could benefit from, and finding them will take some of the load off the larger companies.”
