Learning

An ongoing commitment and focus

In an environment of ongoing change and focus on ‘21st century’ skills, there is consensus that schools need to collaborate and partner with external parties in industry, government and/or the not-for-profit sectors to provide opportunities and experiences to students, and also teachers.

The Gonski Report identifies a range of benefits from ‘school-community engagement’—defined broadly to encompass school-industry collaboration; mentoring and volunteering programs; and extra-curricular activities—including that it:

1. Supports an ‘adaptive education’ model’ by enabling students to:
- learn ‘what is happening outside the school gates’;
- apply knowledge and skills gained at school ‘outside of the classroom’; and
- prepare for ‘a rapidly changing workforce by exposing them to work-related knowledge and skills that the curriculum does not cover’; and

2. Provides teachers with a wider array of learning experiences to engage individual students and meet individual learning needs.