WHERE DO OUR STUDENTS GO BEYOND THE BIG GREEN GATES?

As teachers, we focus our attention on preparing our students for the future, equipping them with essential skills to help them navigate their lives beyond our College.

By Mrs Rowena Barnett Director of PLC Sydney Futures

Symbolically passing through the Green Gates means taking the first step along a new, and mostly unknown pathway to the future.

It is challenging to know exactly where our students move next as they often walk on with confidence into the future without much looking back. This is what we aim for and everything we do is geared towards preparing them for what may lie ahead. We often hear back from them only a few years later when their pathway has become clearer and they return to let us know how they have travelled. However, we do know about the offers that they receive from universities. The Class of 2022 cohort received some outstanding offers from universities. Many students received offers for their first preferences, and others received multiple offers in the different offer rounds. The range of universities and fields of study reflect the breadth and depth of the education that the students receive at PLC Sydney.

The following graphs represent WHERE our students receive offers. Note that this information refers only to universities in NSW/ACT and that some students received multiple offers.

The information graph 1 does not include offers made directly to students from universities (Early Offers). The destinations selected by our students is remarkably similar to those chosen the previous year where 30.1% of students were offered places at the University of Sydney, 22.1% at UNSW and 13.2% at UTS. These 3 universities remain the three most attractive tertiary institutions to our students.

When we look at WHAT our students seek to study, we note that the top two areas they are selecting is similar to the needs projected by the National Skills Comission in their Employment Projections published recently. The combination of STEM & Professional careers (36.1%) is our students’ top preference followed by Health Care and Social Assistance (24.1%).

What is also clear in the National Skills Commission findings is that more than 9 out of 10 jobs in the next 5 years will require a post-school qualification of some sort. This could include a university degree, a VET qualification or some other recognised qualification.

We know that most of our students go on to university study once they pass through our gates and that they are well equipped to face the world as confident young women with the essential transferable skills needed to see them find a meaningful career pathway.

Reference: www.nationalskillscommission.gov.au (n.d.). Employment Projections | National Skills Commission. [online]

Available at: www.nationalskillscommission.gov.au/ topics/employment-projections