School Improvement Episode 59: Careers and pathways education for secondary students

Hello, Teacher editor Jo Earp here and I’ll be your host for today, but before we get into this episode a reminder that if you’re looking for more free content from Teacher head over to the teachermagazine.com website. There are thousands of articles, infographics, videos and podcasts in our archive – they’re all online, they’re all open access, and we publish fresh content throughout the week!

Hello and welcome to this podcast from Teacher. Last month we published an article on a major OECD report on the state of global teenage career preparation. Almost 700,000 15-year-olds across the world, including Australia, were asked about their career plans, the support they receive from schools, and their thoughts on the future. So, in this follow-up we’re going to be sharing an example of how one school – Fairhills High School in Victoria – is doing some great work in the area of careers and pathways education. We’ll be talking about the different programs and experiences, and resources, that students from years 7 to 12, but particularly those in the senior years, have access to (and of course the support that’s there to help parents too), and the partnerships they’ve built with local businesses and industries. 

And just on that last point of partnerships, this is a bit longer episode because there was so much to discuss, but, even then, we didn’t get a chance to chat about 2 that I want to give a quick mention to now – Fairhills has a close relationship with the Outer Eastern Local Learning Employment Network, which is great for linking students with the community; and an initiative that’s part of that is the Careers in Manufacturing, Engineering and Technology program. Students linked in with Coca Cola for that one, for an engineering challenge that involved 4 days of on-site work experience. So, plenty going on at the school and fantastic to be able to share the expertise of staff Bill Exton and Liz Rundle. Enjoy the episode!

Jo Earp: Welcome to this episode of School Improvement. I'm actually on the road again today – I'm actually out of the office, which is always really exciting. I'm here at Fairhills High School, which is in Melbourne, Victoria. Joining me today we've got Bill Exton, Assistant Principal for the Senior School, and Liz Rundle, Careers and Pathways Manager at the school. Bill, I thought we could start off, if you could tell me a bit about the school first of all and its context.

Bill Exton: Yeah, sure. Hi Jo. So, Fairhills High School, we are located as you say in Melbourne, the southeast area of Melbourne, we’re serving the suburb of Knoxfield and also surrounding suburbs, Ferntree Gully as well. Current enrolment sitting at roughly 415 students [years] 7-12, our staff numbers are sitting at roughly around about 40 teaching staff (that's including full-time and part-time staff) and around 15 education support staff. And yeah, I've been Assistant Principal here at Fairhills since the beginning of 2023, so just coming up to 2-and-a-half years now at Fairhills.

JE: Great, yeah, so we are talking about the secondary school context today, which will become clear in a minute. And Liz, as I mentioned, you're the Careers and Pathways Manager here – can you give a very brief overview of that role and what it involves?

Liz Rundle: Hi Jo, thanks for coming out and having a chat. My full-time role is in Careers and Pathways; I'm here 4 days a week, and that is my job. I did previously have a teaching role as well as doing that, but I just did not have enough time available to really service the students and the community the way it needed to be. So, I requested that it be a full-time role, and the school gave me that which is fantastic. I'm here to support staff in terms of their understanding of pathways and careers, and obviously parents, but then most specifically the students.

So, being where I'm located in the school also means that the senior students [years] 10-12 know exactly where I am and often call in when they've got questions that just sort of pop into their heads, which is fantastic. And then I also have a specific role working with programs delivered to [9 through to 12], and then in the junior years we have a Thrive program, which is more like a self-awareness, more a self-management program that the junior students do; and I have provided resources for the staff to work through, mainly focusing on self-awareness.

I've been in the role now for 16 years. In my previous life I was part of a senior school and senior school management, so I have an understanding of, you know, subject selection and everything – and all of that really does help in my role in careers, understanding how schools work, so the 2 things go together really well.

JE: Yeah, it's a complex role, isn't it? It's interesting to hear you there saying about, you know, it needs to be full-time to do all the things that you really need to do. So, Bill, Teacher published an article recently (Earp, 2025) about a new OECD report (2025) that was looking at how schools around the world – this is PISA data actually – are preparing teenagers for their future careers. One of the things that came out of that data was the importance of connecting students with real people in their place of work. So, you know, those on-site activities and just more broadly, though, making sure that there’s support and advice there to help students understand actually what the different opportunities are that are open to them. We're going to talk about some of those things today in a moment. But, when you visit the school website, what's interesting is the careers program gets a really, really prominent position; that's not always the case on some school websites. Not only that, but you've actually got a dedicated Fairhills High School careers website, which is pretty amazing. So, Bill, has that always been a priority area for the school then?

BE: Absolutely, coming into the school as I said at the beginning of 2023, it's something that I noticed as a new member of staff to the school. I'd actually heard a little bit about Fairhills when I was at my previous school – I was actually a Careers and Pathways Coordinator in a previous life, and Liz would know that from my interactions and networking with Liz at my other school. But it does have a prominent position at our school, you're right. There is the focus very much on the access for, not only our students, but also for parents and the wider school community to access the information that we have on our careers website. It is very important to the school, it's a priority for the school. Liz touched on the fact that she has moved to full-time in the role of careers and pathways coordinator, and it's very much due to the fact that we see it as a priority.

We know that students need that time to speak to an expert about, not only their pathways and career choices and thoughts after school, but also their pathways as they travel through school, and especially the important subject selection that takes place towards the senior end of the school as well. So, to have Liz available to our students is very important. And it's essential, I think, to ensure that the students have that access to someone who can provide, you know, top quality advice to them.

JE: Yeah, and we know that with anything in a school, any kind of programs, you know, for it to be really effective and successful, you need to have that leadership support behind it and that leadership buy in. Liz, we mentioned the website, there's an awful lot on that dedicated website – it's fairhillscareers.com for teachers and leaders listening if they want to take a look at that. I'll read a bit from the website, just a bit of snippet; it says, ‘our aim is to provide you with all the latest information that will help you make decisions about your first steps beyond the school gate and achieving your preferred future’. There's information on there about Uni, TAFE, job information access across Australia. You can get information about VCE, VCE VM, VET (we'll maybe talk about some of those acronyms!) and then also obviously people can go into the careers office as well. There's lots of information on there on that website, why is that important to have that resource there, and not just thinking about that traditional kind of like ‘here's your careers teacher, here's your careers office’ you know ‘there you go, pick up some flyers’, that kind of thing?

LR: Well, the website, I have to give support to Career Tools – they're the people that actually do develop the websites for the schools, and then they personalise it for what your school needs and wants – and what's really great about it from my perspective is it's a one-stop shop. I can actually give that link to parents, to students, and I want them to use it as the first place they go and look because it provides links to other websites. Because, in terms of careers and pathways, there's just information overload – it’s really hard to keep that information up to date in your office, and I can't be across absolutely everything.

So, what's really great is that the information is updated regularly; I know that it's going to be accurate. It also gives the students a starting point and one of the things that's really important is that it's accessible after hours. So, they can go home, and they can show their parents something online, which is really good. It's also a place where it provides a platform for students to keep important career information for themselves, or pathways information for themselves – so they can develop a resume, they can develop cover letters, they can do all sorts of career testing and investigation, and then keep that information in one place so that they are then able to organise their information and their data.

We initially started using it because of the Career Action Plans and the need for students to have a Career Action Plan across the school, and it became the platform that we used to do that; so, the juniors also do that. And you can personalise that Career Action Plan to actually be tailored to each of the individual students, which is awesome. It also has a fantastic timetable for students to see what kind of events are coming up and happening. 

We also outsource a fortnightly newsletter which provides the kids with a great summary and snapshot of what's coming up, and I do actually share that with 7-12 – even though 7s are not necessarily looking at, you know, a snapshot of a particular uni, or a particular maybe employment opportunity, but parents are looking and they need to be aware of how things are changing. So, careers really is about all of the key stakeholders being able to access information – and parents can't always come into my office, students can't always make an appointment – and that way we have the opportunity to make sure that the information is there and they can go and have a look there first.

We also have Career Information Sessions – which I think are really critical. So, when we do have parent evenings … it's about establishing working relationships with all the key stakeholders that sort of puts, you know, faces and names together so parents know who they need to speak to if they've got particular problems. … they're obviously really important, particularly from year 10 onwards; although, you know, in year 9 they can also come to their Morrisby interview, which is really great as well.

JE: And the Morrisby, we’ll talk about that after the break. 

LR: Yeah.

JE: Yeah, interesting point there about sort of putting the names to faces and letting them know what's available. Because that's another thing – sometimes you kind of set up these things, it's there but actually telling people it's there and communicating that is the important point as well, isn't it?

LR: And I think the point there is that sometimes students won't investigate things for themselves always, parents use this information and are proactive and will actually contact me and say ‘hey, I saw this in a newsletter’ or ‘I saw this on the website, can you then …’ and it then starts a conversation. And that's what you need to happen, is starting a conversation about their student.

JE: Absolutely. OK, Bill from a leadership perspective then, we've spoken about how it's always been a priority for the school, it's not just something for the students who are in their final sort of year or 2 of the school where you're like ‘Oh, what are you going to do now?’ How are you managing that timetabling aspect? Making sure that careers and pathways planning and education gets that time and space and the resources? That's a tough one, isn't it always, juggling those things for leaders?

BE: Yeah, look, it is. It's always difficult in terms of who's going to get a piece of the curriculum pie, so to speak. Everybody wants and feels that their area is the most important in that sort of dividing up of the time for our students. At our junior levels in years 7, 8 and 9, we have a Thrive and Connect program that we run; so, 7 and 8 we have our Thrive program, our (I guess) pastoral care program, in which we incorporate some early pathways and careers thoughts. It's more about at that age with students to have a little bit of an idea of who they are and what they're about and looking in at themselves before as you progress through school, then, starting to look more at the outside world and what's sort of on offer.

So, that continues into year 9 with our Connect program, and that really is about our students connecting to not only what's on offer for them at school but then trying to relate that to what's on offer outside and into the community as well. Our year 9 students will have an excursion every fortnight, and they will go out into the community and take part in various different activities. It might be a case of going out and having a look at different sort of industries, or it might be more sort of from a wellbeing point of view, and, you know …

LR: I know the year 9s also in Connect do things like Landcare, they'll work with the local Landcare group and do some environmental stuff. They'll also do things like soup kitchens, etcetera. And they'll talk to me about those sorts of things when I say to them, you know, ‘what work experience have you done?’; when we're putting a resume together, ‘where have you volunteered? What have you done?’ And then they start talking about the things that they might have done in Connect – and they're really valuable, which is great. 

Connect is also where we embed our Morrisby program – our career insights – which of course means that it's the first time that students at the school get to do a really deep dive into their persona, and in particular we really highlight the fact that the Morrisby profiling is going to highlight their strengths and their skill set, that they can then start that conversation about, you know, ‘well, where am I headed? What kind of industries are best going to suit me?’

So, we have a whole day of Connect where we do the profiling, and we're coming up in the next week or so to our face-to-face interviews with Morrisby careers practitioners coming in and talking to the kids. And I think it's good for that to happen with somebody else, not necessarily just me, because sometimes just having someone different talk to you about who you are and what something’s saying opens their eyes, and they really like that. They’ve actually been asking me ‘when are we unpacking our results?’, because they don't get it until they get their interview, which is great. 

And in particular, we also have one-off programs for the 10, 11 and 12s; so, we'll devote a morning, or a day, or a couple of periods, where we need it, to deliver information that's of importance to each of the particular year levels, so; and they'll be connected to sort of maybe a wellbeing day where I'll have a couple of periods to talk about, you know the importance … well, just the most recent one of course was first term, which was the importance of work experience, which, of course, they're going out soon for year 10s. So, we did a session about why we need to do work experience and why it's important, and that was embedded with a wellbeing day as well. And we'll do the same thing in term 2 – they're having a wellbeing day now, but they're also having a whole week of work experience, so, yeah. And then the 11s and 12s will really ramp up [term] 3 and 4 obviously because of, you know, planning pathways and subject selection and everything else. So, yeah.

BE: Yeah, it does get a lot trickier the higher up you go in a school – that time is seen as being quite precious for subjects and things – but we incorporate our careers and pathways programs around the timetabling for our senior students. As Liz mentioned, the work experience program at year 10 in Victoria for government schools is pretty much what most government schools will get their students involved in, which is really important for students to go out and experience the world of work. With our 11s and 12s we highlight (and our 10s as well), we highlight certainly at the end of term 2 and into term 3, the importance of ensuring that their subject choices are right for VCE.

We'll spend pretty much the first 3 to 4 weeks of term 3 with our year 10s, and our 11s as well, in speaking with them individually, but also providing a program for them to get a little bit of a taste of those subjects at year 11 and 12, which we feel is really important for them in them then making that choice for what subjects they're going to choose. And obviously that relates as well to ensuring that they're fully aware of the prerequisites for university courses and those sorts of things as well. So, we really do try and ensure that we're providing our senior students with those opportunities of, you know, fully being able to understand what they need to do in order to get the best opportunity for once they leave school.

JE: You're listening to an episode of the School Improvement podcast series from Teacher magazine. I'm here at Fairhills High School with Assistant Principal Bill Exton and Pathways Coordinator Liz Rundle. We'll be talking about the range of careers support on offer to students, including those valuable on-site, workplace activities and some of that planning around the pathways, after the break.

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Back to this episode of School Improvement, and more of my chat with Bill Exton and Liz Rundle. A quick heads up on some of the acronyms you might not be familiar with – we’ll be talking about the VCE (which is the Victorian Certificate of Education, that’s senior secondary, typically taken in years 11 and 12; and there’s also the VCE VM, which is a Vocational Major within the VCE and again that’s designed to be a 2-year program).

JE: Also in that OECD report article that we did (I'll put a link to that by the way in the transcript of this podcast at teachermagazine.com) Andreas Schleicher was saying there's a real mismatch there between students who want to take a particular career – you know, they've got a particular ambition in their life – but they actually don't want to go to university. But they don't understand that they do have to do those, you know, tertiary pathways to actually enable that. So, it's about giving them that information and making clear exactly what's needed and how they're going to get to where they want to go, basically.

LR: And one of the real strengths I think of the school is the fact that every pathway is valued equally. And when we have those conversations, those individual conversations with students – you know 9,10 and 11 and 12 then obviously when they're transitioning into the community – it's about what's going to best suit you in terms of your learning style, in terms of your end goals, and what are going to be the steps that you need to take to get there. Because, if they have got unrealistic dreams, you know they really don't like academic learning but they think they're going to get … then you have to sort of open their try and open their eyes to ‘well, if you can't be the doctor, let's think about absolutely all the other things that sort of fit in that same medical sphere that are going to make you happy and still get you to the industry where you want to be’.

So, they don't know what they don't know, and it is about trying to make sure that they realise that picking the right education pathway is going to make them more successful. But also, I think it's important – and we talk to year 9 about this, about the fact that their education is ongoing, it's not going to stop; don't think that when you finish school it's you're done. You are going to keep learning, and you should keep learning, and that you need to make sure you understand how you do that so you can choose the best provider for you to get you where you want to go.

JE: Liz, I want to just go back to something you mentioned earlier about the Morrisby career insights program, that's year 9 I think you said, tell me a bit more about that.

LR: Well, the Morrisby profiling is an international profiling program that you can use – which has been provided by the Department in Victoria for all our year 9s, which is amazing – and it gives the kids insights into their aptitude, their abilities, where their strengths lie in terms of academia, whether it's mathematical (or numeracy, I should say), or whether it's literacy, whether they're you know a good problem solver, all of those sorts of things. And then it links them (as well as their values and their personality traits), and then it links them to careers and opens up a conversation for the kids to start thinking about what careers are going to best, particularly suit them. It also gives them information about pathways in terms of what kind of subjects they potentially should be looking at if this is their strength and this is the industry that they're looking at going into.

So, we're going to get our year 10s to reflect on their Morrisby from last year (as year 9s) when they're doing their subject selection this year and having them really think about that particular program and the value of it, and they can retake it too if they want to. But I see it as a valuable insight into them. And the thing is that, sometimes they don't necessarily, they think they know what they want, but they're not necessarily looking at who they are before they really make those decisions.

JE: OK, I mentioned that one thing to come out that OECD report then was the need to connect students with on-site activities. So, making sure that they get into real workplaces, getting a sense of what the job actually involves and so on. Again, you've touched on this before, there's a lot happening here at Fairhills High School in that area, isn't there?

LR: Yeah, there is. We've had events on for year 10s where we have like, we call it a Round Table. So, we get past students back who are in all sorts of different types of jobs. So, we had a group of alumni last year that came back; and we had school principals, we had realtors, we had people who are in medical science, we've had people who were veterinary scientists, we've had nurses. And what's really great about that is that the year 10s get to see people who sat basically in the same chairs that they are, and where they are now. And their journeys have all been very, very different, and it's really great for the students. The students hear their story and then they get to do like speed dating; so, they get to go around and ask specific questions –about pathways and how things happened and what their job is like – to the people who are in the room, which has been great, they’ve been really good.

The other way we've had students go out and get real life experiences is going to things like Expos and even events at some of the TAFE providers. So, we went to the [Metro] Tunnel Project last year, which was fantastic. The kids got to see all the different trades that worked in the Tunnel Project and all the different kinds of opportunities there are in construction that they were unaware of. We've had the trades come out and talk to the girls, particularly, women in the trades coming out and doing an event where girls could see what it was to be a plumber or an electrician, or a carpenter, and an engineer – things that they probably might not have considered for themselves.

And sometimes the kids just come along because, you know, ‘my friend's going’ but just even that little bit of exposure is amazing. And we went to careers expos as well where you've got industry all in one place; it gives the kids an opportunity to ask questions that they wouldn’t otherwise and also to think about the fact that there are jobs out there that they don't even consider as being an opportunity.

JE: Yeah – the Tunnel Project is the Metro Tunnel – and there's also structured workplace learning as well as in there, which gives, you know, not just that one off in the workplace, am I right in thinking that's like kind of like a regular thing where they go out and do ‘regular’ work experience, if you like?

LR: Yeah, so structured workplace learning in Victoria is linked particularly to VET in Schools (or Vocational Education and Training in Schools) or TAFE training. So, if a student is doing a particular VET program, some of them actually require them to go out on site, into the workplace to develop some competencies – so that's structured workplace learning. But then with the introduction of the VCE Vocational Major program (which is the vocational strain of VCE), students have the opportunity to go out and do structured workplace learning. And our structured workplace learning is embedded in our timetable, so, our students who don't do VVE, like mainstream, but do the VCE Vocational Major [VM], all have a day a week allocated for them to go out and do structured workplace learning on site.

JE: Oh, fantastic.

LR: And I help them to find their placements for that. What's really great about structured workplace learning for students in their VET, and also in their VM, is that they end up with a whole lot of potentially industry experience under their belt that they can put onto their resume before they leave school. For some of them, they find out that maybe the industry they thought was going to be for them really isn't for them; so that's, I mean, you're learning – that doesn't matter whether it's a positive or negative outcome. And it also means that for students who are undecided about what they want to do, they get the opportunity to try different industries before they leave school – before they sign up for an apprenticeship or a traineeship, they can be sure that they know what this industry is really about because they've done days of structured workplace learning.

The other outcome that's amazing for structured workplace learning is that if students really do know the industry they want to do, they go out, they work with the employer in structured workplace learning for maybe 6 months, and then that employer says ‘well, you know, hang on a minute, I don't want to lose you. You're too valuable and I'm going to keep you one as an apprentice’ and they do what we call part-time apprenticeship or a school-based apprenticeship here in Victoria. And that means that they're actually going to work, ticking off hours off their apprenticeship, doing their training, but still getting their final school certificate. And structured workplace learning normally leads into that, because obviously an employee is not going to sign you up sight unseen and untested; students probably shouldn't sign up with an employer if they don't really know whether they're going to fit into their particular industry or business, fit with them. So, it's a really great way for students to have that hands-on experience of what it is they might want to do, yeah. 

JE: Uh-huh, absolutely, and so there's a lot, the going back again and again, which is great to hear. Thinking about that more broadly then, Bill, these kinds of experiences – you know, making those connections, having guest speakers in and so on – in terms of the school overall, then, that means you've got to have really great relationships with the local community, with local businesses, with key industries. Is that part of the leadership strategic planning as well, then?

BE: Absolutely it is. We see it as a key priority for the school. It is seen in terms of our partnerships that we have with tertiary institutions and also local businesses as well. We have a close partnership with Swinburne University TAFE – there is a campus within 2 kilometres of Fairhills High School and our students are regular attenders to the programs that are on offer there – and we also have, and are forging partnerships with, other sorts of industries as well.

I guess our focus is very much in terms of STEM at the moment and looking at ensuring that our students have a sense of all things STEM, having a bit of a go at robotics and things like that, and looking at those future pathways that are linked to those sort of STEM industries. And also getting partnerships with … getting to belong to the Hydrogen Car Grand Prix competition as well, which links in industries with schools as well. So that's just a couple of examples of our partnerships. 

But we see it as an absolute priority for the school because, ultimately, that's what we're all about – to provide our students with a toolbox which is going to make sure that they're fit and OK for getting out into the big wide world.

JE: OK Liz, then, I want to finish by talking about the impact then, the all-important impact of all the work that you're doing here – those student experiences, I thought it would be nice to share a few of those!

LR: Oh sure. Actually, when I was thinking about the alumni that came back and talked to the year 10s – as a result of those alumni, we've had people volunteer work experience positions for students, which is really great. So, we've got some ex Fairhill students that actually provide us with opportunities for students to go into their workplace, and that's many and varied, which is fantastic.

Students who've been going through the structured workplace learning – last year we had 5 students who effectively went through and started their apprenticeships here at school and continued those into the workforce straight from school; so, that's really a massive tick, I think, for students being successful. And they range from, all sorts of things, we had one young man who was doing a traineeship with McDonald's, who now is in a managerial position, and he got his VCE, which I think is really great. We had another young man who initially was going to go into the ADF [Australian Defence Force] and went and did work experience down at Point Cook, came back, was all gung-ho, that's what he desperately wanted to do, he then started a school-based apprenticeship in auto and has continued that and is an amazing apprentice for one of the big car companies just locally, which is, they love that, that was great.

We've had another young man who in year 9 and 10 was a little bit misguided, we could say, and we got him into a VET program – a vocational training program Certificate II level at year 10, so he started in year 10, he finished it in year 11, he did work experience with a local builder and turned the whole thing around, which was just brilliant, a brilliant thing. So that was sort of work experience and VET all working together to organise for a student to be super successful.

And one of the alumni that did come back – was desperate, desperate to be a veterinary doctor; and everything she learnt, and then what she knew about herself, she knew that learning was something that was challenging, but she went through that. She got work experience at the zoo – which took us 2 years to secure, but we did it – and then she went on and did a diploma, and then into her bachelor, so… 

JE: Fantastic! That's lovely to hear. Thank you so much, both of you, for hosting me today. It's been really lovely to come out to the school and hear about all of those things that you're doing Liz, and the school and the leadership priorities Bill, that are supporting students and their families in the area of careers education. You might be able to hear in the background, the bell has just gone for lunch time, so I think that's our cue to leave. Bill and Liz, thanks so much. Best of luck for the rest of the year!

Well, that was an absolute joy to record, I hope you enjoyed it too! That’s all for this bumper episode but if you want to keep listening, a reminder, there are loads more in the archive. Find those wherever you get your podcasts from. Hit the follow button to make sure you don’t miss out on new episodes, and please leave a rating and a review while you’re there because it helps other people find the podcast. Bye!

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References

Earp, J. (2025, May 26). Research news: Preparing teenagers for their future careers. Teacher magazine. https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/research-news-preparing-teenagers-for-their-future-careers 

OECD. (2025). The State of Global Teenage Career Preparation. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/d5f8e3f2-en.