In 2004 a new support version of the Logbook will be introduced, which is designed for: students with disabilities, some students from backgrounds other than English, students with low literacy levels or younger students at risk of leaving school early. A computer disk is now included as part of the Logbook which contains Microsoft Word templates so that schools and students can modify pages to suit their needs.
Burwood Girls High School is one that embraced the program early on and has found it extremely useful. The school itself is situated in the inner western suburbs of Sydney and has a large and diverse student population: approximately 900 students and some 70 percent of the students speak more than one language; 56 different language groups are represented at the school.
The activities described by students can range from the work they did on a succession of afternoons lending a hand at a local day care centre to showing visitors around the school. One group of students, who worked in their commerce subject extension on ‘running’ a business, identified a long list of skills they had used in the project. They presented their ‘findings’ to the rest of the class. The abilities they utilised included:
- collect data correctly;
- assign different tasks to team members to meet deadline;
- meet deadlines;
- set priorities;
- work independently and effectively;
- organise minutes and agendas; and
- follow oral instructions;
and quite a few more.
As Larissa Treskin the school principal at the time the logbooks were introduced to the school, pointed out:
The girls will leave school with a portfolio of evidence about the skills they have been using, and identified, not only in specific careers education areas (like work experience) but across the entire curriculum and outside school. In fact, what is so valuable about this logbook portfolio is that it will show that they haven’t learned these skills in a separate area but have been able to integrate them across outside jobs, hobbies, sport and other leisure activities as well as in classroom work.
The key to the logbooks is for students to think about and thereby make explicit the skills which they have developed or are developing. Especially at the 14 to 15-year-old end of the youth-in-transition spectrum, students have trouble recognising the skills they have. The logbooks are an aid for helping students understand their skills and where they are, or might be, applicable.
The logbooks also lead directly to the Action Plan which students work on. Here they systematically consider: what I want to achieve; what needs to be done? how does it link to my career choice? who will do it? when? etc. These are reviewed each year and revised, again, a cumulative record is built of the evolution of students’ thinking about life and work post school.
One of the great advantages, from the educators’ perspective, is that the logbook can be used across all the curriculum areas – and in Year 9, it is used in every class. School to Work Planning is thus a vehicle for integrating vocational education into the general curriculum. It is a mechanism which gives reality to the generally accepted argument that thinking about work skills is not just the province of careers teachers and counsellors but is the responsibility of the whole school (and everyone in it). Joe Denaro, from DET NSW who helped devise the School to Work Planning protocols, also pointed out:
One of the most interesting aspects of the logbooks is that they allow teachers and students to retrospectively analyse outcomes – they allow students (and teachers helping them) to tease out from within what these skills are and try to articulate them for a range of stakeholders. The point is: everything need not be specified (by the teacher) in advance.
Using the logbooks also helps students to focus on exactly what they are doing now, while simultaneously broadening their view of the relevance of these present tasks to life outside and beyond school.
The School to Work program has expanded consistently across NSW: from 28 government school pilots with 500 ‘at risk’ students in 1998 to 410 schools and 42,000 students in 2001. There are now more than 500 government secondary schools, central schools, schools for specific purposes and juvenile justice centres participating in the School to Work Program, with a high proportion implementing the Logbook. Over the next four years, all students in Years 9-12 in NSW government schools will be using the Employment Related Skills Logbook as an essential part of their transition planning.
SOURCES:
School to Work Planning Resource Kit (CD ROM and video), 2001 NSW Department of Education and Training, Sydney.
Interview with Joe Denaro, adviser to School to Work Project, August 2001.
Additional information can be retrieved from http://www.tdd.nsw.edu.au/schooltowork/planning/index.asp
Additional information on school-to-work planning obtained from the NSW Department of Education and Training, Sydney, (March 2004).