A project funded by the Queensland Government’s Education Horizon 2022

University entrance is becoming the preferred post-school pathway for young Queenslanders, reducing the post-school pathways they and their parents view as being worthwhile and might best aligned with their interests and talents. This can also lead to circuitous and unproductive pathways and serve to exacerbate skill shortages in a range of occupations. Previous studies identified the importance of industry-school partnerships to inform and guide young people’s engagement in diverse post school pathways. Earlier examples of collective action and engagement associated with students navigating potential gaps in the transition from school to employment emphasised the importance of partnerships amongst local businesses, schools and tertiary education institutions, and as facilitated at the local level. It was found that initiating, sustaining and enacting these partnerships was premised upon shared concerns and working in the collective, rather than the individual institutional interests. So, there is a potential role for partnerships like these to assist inform about and provide experiences for young people’s decision-making for post-school pathways. It is towards evaluating the potential of these pathways that is the focus of a project reported here.

In this project, findings from the eight case studies of partnership programs associated with VET in Queensland offer insights into what successful models might look like and how these might be more broadly applied within local communities. These offer a range of distinct approaches to building partnerships at the local level that are responsive to needs in encouraging and engaging young people in VET and then supporting their initial occupational preparation. The eight case studies are listed in Table 1 with links to their descriptive summaries.

Table 1 Case studies of industry-school partnerships

In each case study, a descriptive summary of the case was provided, including description, governance, operation and engagement with young people/ workplaces/ educational institutions, followed by a narrative discussion of the case study. The narrative was built around i) the context of the partnership, ii) evaluating the partnership work in terms of building and sustaining the partnership, and scope for improvements for continuity outcomes, and iii) efforts of informing young people about and engaging them in post-school pathways.