Busting VET Myths video

- [Georgia] My name is Georgia Foley.

- [Hudson] I'm Hudson Summerfield.

- [Jayden M.] My name is Jayden McDonald.

- [Drew] I'm Drew Murden.

- [Kyah] I'm Kyah and I did a School Based Apprenticeship.

- [Jaiden S.] My name is Jaiden, I'm coming from the Kalkadoon Country in North Queensland.

- [Hudson] What do you do now and what was your path to get there? So, I do timber frame and truss design, so I design houses. I never wanted to go to uni, so I thought, I might as well get out, get my qualifications.

- [Kyah] I work a few different jobs at the moment, so some days I work at a bakery and then other days I'm working at TAFE as an Education Support Officer for the Tourism and Hospitality Section. I've always had a passion for baking, I was always baking at home as a kid, and then all through high school I had no idea what I wanted to do when I finished school, so yeah, that's when I found out about SBATS.

- [Jaiden S.] I was always planning to finish school, but I didn't look at the SBAT side of things. I was just going to go through year 12 and finish the schooling traditionally, as everyone else normally would. After I finished my SBAT for Education Support, they offered me a job at Tamworth South, so I've been working there as an SLSO.

- [Jayden M.] I'm currently doing Cert III at TAFE. Hopefully I get to complete that in the next couple years, and go work for Double-R.

- [Drew] I'm currently Workshop Manager for Double-R trucks in Tamworth.

- [Georgia] So when I was in high school, I knew that I wanted to be an electrician, probably about year 10. I wasn't completely convinced because I thought I'd get judged, I suppose, for wanting to do something different. So I finished year 12 and when I was doing my HSC applied for this apprenticeship and the rest is history.

- [Kyah] People say that VET training isn't as valuable as university degrees, but I don't think that's true because I'm doing something that I thoroughly enjoy. When I was a School Based Apprentice, I was earning while I was learning, I was getting real life time experience and yeah, I was doing something that I was truly passionate about, and I mean, I'm only 22 years old and I'm already in a position in my career where I'm very happy and yeah, 'm excited to see where it's going to go.

- [Jaiden S.] Another myth I've heard is that you only get stuck in one career pathway from VET, which is obviously wrong. For me, I've had multiple opportunities to go into lots of different things. I've got my education pathway if I choose that, I've now got my business pathway, and my fitness pathway as well. So it gives me a variety of things that I can choose and work through, if I'm doing one thing for one year and I don't like it, then I've got another two options.

- [Jayden M.] There's a bit of a myth that saying that you can't, as a School Based Apprenticeship, that you can't make full-time work out of it, but clearly there is, according to my boss here, and some of the other boys in the workshop.

- [Hudson] Another myth is obviously, they don't pay well, most trades don't pay well, which obviously not many people are going to pay a 15 year old $1,000 a week to be a first year apprentice when they have no idea, no experience. But you're going to do the hard road before you get to the cream on top sort of thing. I've done it, I've been there. Now I've got, I've got a house, and family, and it's - yeah. been steady, and it's great.

- [Georgia] It is a myth that you can't go further with your career after you finish your apprenticeship. I did 4 years. You learn so much and then afterwards I've done more courses, I've advanced my knowledge and I have future endeavours to further my mining career, and become a deputy or an under manager one day, so that's a big step forward from that.

- [Drew] As far as the myths when I was at school was that: if you didn't go to university, you'd get nowhere, and you wouldn't make any good money. So for me, I'd found a partner, by sort of aged 20 and at age 21, we went in together and bought our first house, and worked hard. paid most of that off, and then yeah, we're on to our second one now, we were able to have that as an investment for a while, so that's nice to prove that, I suppose, misconception, wrong.

- [Kyah] What do you love most about what you do? I love being able to share my passion with other people.

- [Jaiden S.] I love to be able to have a positive role in the students' lives that I work with, and kind of give them the motivation to be better.

- [Georgia] I'm very proud to be where I am now, in an underground mine. I was the only girl at the start. Now there's more women getting into this, which is amazing to see, and it's so good.

- [Hudson] There's someone basically giving you their life savings, and saying "build my house." It's pretty incredible to look at the start of the job and it's one bit of timber,

to look at the end of the job and it's a full house standing on site with someone's family living in it.

- [Jayden M.] What I love most about what I do is just proving the statistics wrong about Aboriginal people in the workplace, and being that leading front foot for them, and just love that all the people you meet, and all the opportunities you get. And the best thing that this trade is that there's just that many opportunities for you, you just don't know which one you want to take.

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