The St John's College / RML Automation Link
In 2006, St John's College teacher Steve Andrew established a number of links with a range of industries in the Hamilton area for his senior technology classes. With only six students in his Year 13 class, Steve had decided to match each student to a different local industry to provide individual mentoring for their year-long major technology project.
"I wanted students to go out into the community and become more aware of what's happening – to give them a better idea of what they could do when they left school, and also to reinforce that what we were doing in school was pretty close to what's happening in industry these days.”
In setting up these links, Steve was fortunate to have access to brokering help from WECA, the Waikato Engineering Careers Association. WECA works with secondary schools, raising awareness of mechanical engineering careers with teachers, career advisors and students. Students are given opportunities to visit the workplaces of WECA members, to understand roles and working environments.
The links formed for this class were highly successful, for the students and for the industries involved. They have since continued and expanded in 2007, using a different format for the Year 13 Technology programme because of substantial increase in student numbers, and now also involve both his Year 12 and Year 11 classes.
