Youth recruitment

The Aoraki Development youth recruitment programme reported in the Herald the other day sounds a very worthy initiative.

However, it would be interesting to know – in addition to much interfacing and various offers of apprenticeships, etc – exactly how many people have been employed as a result of the programme.

Jock Anderson

Timaru

Footnote: Nigel Davenport, Aoraki Development chief executive responds: Although just into its third year, the MyNextMove initiative is still in its relative infancy as the benefits of a collaborative approach to ‘‘exposing, educating and exciting’’ our youth on their next move options become evident. An immediate measure of those actually employed as a direct result of the initiative is difficult to obtain at this early stage, however, we continue to work with secondary schools and industry to establish robustness around this. That said direct employment is just one measure of the effectiveness of MyNextMove as the focus is on ensuring we as a community provide a wide variety of quality interactions between students and business , to both help inform year 10 students on their NCEA subject choices but ultimately also assist our next generation make as fully informed decision as possible as they look to begin their life post secondary school.

From the information provided to us by our local secondary schools 34 per cent of our 2018 school leavers have gone straight into employment versus 32 per cent in 2017. A further 66 per cent in 2018 have chosen further education, a similar level to 2017.

There is also feedback from careers advisers about the impact , that the students are expressing excitement when they discover new pathways options that they had never heard of before. The students feedback is that they are able to more easily recognise the link between what they learn in school and how they can use that knowledge and skills in the future.