A NEW partnership between Maffra Secondary College, Australia Post and Schools Connect Australia will help local students learn first-hand employment and leadership skills.
The ‘Business Class Partnership’ will run for three years, with the aim to improve students’ employability skills and career aspirations by providing good role models and work experiences.
Maffra Secondary College principal Jeanette McNamara said the program began as an idea to raise student aspirations in the country and to encourage completion of year 12.
“We didn’t have a program in mind, then Schools Connect came on board and then Australia Post came on board, and we’ve developed the program from working together and using the expertise in the organisations to work out what would be the best way for us to contribute in ways that help develop both of our organisations,” she said.
Ms McNamara said the program was one of many the school had implemented in recent years to benefit students.
Earlier this year the College’s Broadening Horizons Program received a major award for science innovation in schools, with Ms McNamara hoping this latest initiative would be just as successful in the long term.
“Australia Post has been working with us this year in our leadership development and the way we lead the school, and we’ve now got a purpose statement which is ‘more than they imagine’, which is a fantastic result,” she said.
“We’ve discovered when working with Australia Post, that Maffra Secondary College had more than we imagined.
“It’s a bigger school than lots of people realise, it has lots more programs than people realise, we get much better results than lots of people realise, we have fantastic students and fantastic staff that lots of people don’t realise.”
Maffra students will attend Australia Post head office in August to gain some first-hand experience of working life.
Australia Post head of partnerships, Chris Newton, said the interaction between the school students and Australia Post graduates was a great learning experience for both parties.
“We have a number of talented second-year graduates at Australia Post, not long out of university, who will be heavily involved in this program,” he said.
“They’re only a few years older than the students we’ll be working with, which makes it easier for students to relate to them and stepping into a professional work environment less intimidating.”
