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| Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) :: Initation & Development |
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Initiation and Development of the program
Many young people who had left school prior to completing Year 12 in the Bairnsdale area had previously been attached to a service such as Jobs Pathway Program or Jobs Placement Employment and Training, but they had used up their formal time allotment with those programs and could not gain access to further opportunities for work experience or work placement. This issue was identified as one of concern - a blocker to continued education and training for some young people - when discussed at the East Gippsland Local Learning and Employment Network (LLEN) at the end of 2003. It was felt that these young people were unemployed, engaged in crime, had mental health problems and no future. A strong sense of social justice existed among the participants of the Local Learning and Employment Network and they wanted to put something in place that would enable these young people, with support, to make themselves a future.
Personnel from a number of support agencies came together, including Workways Jobs Pathways Program, Bairnsdale Adult Community Education, TAFE, Bairnsdale Secondary College, and the police. They combined their collective local wisdom to identify young people they thought would benefit from the program. Some young people had left school but there had been no further follow up, while others were seen around town. Expressions of interest were sent to potential students and these were then followed up by visits (especially to Indigenous families) and telephone calls to encourage these young people to rejoin education. Once the word was out about the program, young people began to visit the site to ask to be part of it.
 At the end of 2003 the Victorian Department of Education approached the Deputy Principal at the regional catholic school to become the Coordinator of a Satellite Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning program that would be attached to the local Bairnsdale Secondary College.
The Deputy Principal had previously been responsible for a regionally supported program called 'Changing Lanes' based at the Catholic College. It was funded by ATSIC through the Aboriginal Cooperative. Changing Lanes, in its first existence, provided work placement in automotive and basic mechanics for 8 young people from local schools at risk of leaving school for a 12 week block of time before they returned to mainstream schooling.
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