School to Work information session
[On-screen text]
School to Work consultation outcomes and next steps
Schools and stakeholders
[Richard Duke, Director, School Industry Engagement, Senior Secondary Pathways Reform Division]
Hi everybody thank you for making time out of your busy Thursday mornings. My name is Richard Duke. I'm Director of School Industry Engagement within the Senior Secondary Pathways Reform Division in the Department of Education. I'm gonna be taking you through some slides which are just coming up on the screen now, in relation to the consultation and outcomes of the School to Work program. So, I will begin the presentation now. Thank you for your time and we will be taking questions at the end so I will get through as many of those as we can. I'll begin by acknowledging the various lands that you're calling from today and I pay respects to and I'm calling from the unceded lands of the Wiradjuri people and pay respect to elders past and present.
So, what we will do today, is provide an overview of what we heard during the consultation in relation to work-based learning and School to Work. Just seen a point around the audio, is that something and is there any issues with other audio, other people hearing audio? Okay. All right, that looks like it's good. Thank you, everyone. I will do my best to speak at correct volume, but we'll also outline how School to Work is to be reshaped and changes to the related programs, and as I said a few moments ago, I will take some questions. I anticipate we will have more questions than we have time to answer and we will endeavour to get back to everybody with sort of like a review of the questions after the session, but I'll do my best to answer as many as I can.
So, in terms of, before I start talking about School to Work, this in terms of our vision for the secondary school’s system, we really care about three things in terms of completion, preparedness, and that students are thriving. And so, in terms of completion, we want to make sure that students are able to choose an engagement pathway that best fits them, and they finished school confident and prepared for what comes next and they're able to progress into jobs for the study that align with their interests and strengths. We've got six things that we're kind of prioritising in making that happen
So, if we think about those as our outcomes, these are the things that are focused and School to Work has breadth across all of these spaces in terms of how it plays a really important role. So, we want students to have access to career and pathway programs Those programs and pathways need to be of high quality, and one thing that's really, really important here is around perception and that all pathways are valued equally, whether that's going down a vocational or tertiary route and that there's an understanding of the value of all pathways and that regardless of a student's background, there are of no disadvantage in terms of accessing the pathway that is important to them. And also what we're doing is relevant in terms of it aligns the student interests and supports the economic priorities of Victoria and there is a coherent and efficient system to navigate for schools, employers, and most importantly students.
So, in February, we began a consultation on what people's views were in relation to work based learning and how School to Work enables the work-based learning for students. And we did this in two ways, so we used the Engage Victoria platform, which invited stakeholders to make written submissions or undertake a survey, and I'll take you through what that survey set summary of those survey responses in just a moment, and we did individual group meetings and with important stakeholders.
So, we received 500 survey responses of which just over half are from regional Victoria and we received over a hundred written submissions including 26 from Local Learning and Employment Networks. We, in terms of our targeted stakeholder meetings, we actually spoke to over 240 people in total, this included Local learning and Employment Networks, school principals, career practitioners, industry peak bodies, and service providers of comparable services, and peak bodies in this space. And we engaged with DE colleagues and tech schools and staff and regional services within the department as well.
So, getting to what the survey responses said, so I said we had over 500 responses, the left-hand table shows you who those responses came from. So, a significant proportion were within schools, so approaching 300 of the 500 were from within schools, but we also had really good representation from parents and employers. And really really happy that some students engaged in this as well. This isn't entirely surprising. You'd expect the vast majority of people who are engaged and interest in this topic would have some understanding of the School to Work program but the vast majority said that they either knew a lot or knew a little bit about the program. So that equates to over 80% had a knowledge of the program, which is really great, so tells us that what we were hearing was an informed response to work-based learning and School to Work. So, what did people say? And there's a kind of like there's a lot more detail underneath this, but I think what's really really clear from these survey responses that we had was there was very, very strong views and that work experience and structured work-based learning was important. So over 80 % of respondents were saying that these activities and we also heard that similar responses in terms of the group learning activities in terms of working with employees for students was that was important and that and this was a really interesting question in terms of purpose, in terms of that work experience relates to a possible career, and this is a big part and I'll talk about this probably a little bit later, but we see work experience is a really good opportunity to try something out that you may or may not have an interest in or I say may not may not have an interest in afterwards, but it's a really great way of testing what the interest is in a potential career going forward.
And then we asked them some questions in terms of agreement, do it in terms of the question of do you agree that all secondary students should have access to work experience, structured workplace learning and well and taking a VET certificate, and to group activities. Again, the vast majority in all these cases are approaching or over 90 % of respondents said that they were important. And also 90 % of respondents said that there should be a focus on supporting students that can't arrange students on their own that really talks to the point around equity I was mentioning earlier.
And, so similarly in terms of like the similar responses in terms of when we talk about that we should be supporting those that face barriers. Again, I'm seeing some messages around sound. I'm gonna carry on unless I am told that there's but there are other challenges, but apologies if some people are unable to hear and just a reassurance that that there is a recording so if there is anything that you have missed that I'm presenting. I've been assured everything is fine in the recording, so that should work well.
In terms of specifics of like sort of more detailed questions, we asked what are the biggest benefits of work experience? So, there's quite long tails on these charts, but we picked out the top five.
In each case, and this is where I have to turn my head a little bit to be able to read these out to you. But there's things around improving work readiness for students, gaining better understanding of career options, gaining confidence and such like, which really aligns with our theory of change in terms of why work experience is really, really important. And also, like when you like on the flip side of when you we've it's ascertained by through this consultation that people think work experience and work-based learning is really, really important. We also need to understand why individuals and students are not able to participate. And so, the top five reasons and then broadly a theme here is that there's not enough employers to provide placements. The second one is a more nuanced version of that, that there's not enough opportunities that align to interests, and travel becomes an issue in terms of access, and again schools not having a relationship with and connections with employers, which links back to the first two.
And then we picked out what employers said, so this is specifically looking at employer responses in terms of, and this really talks to the barriers around access. So, resources, this comes out and I work very closely with people employer peak bodies, and this comes out a lot in terms of the resource levels required, like to supervise students is really, really challenging from an employee perspective sometimes, under challenges in terms of identifying the activities, so that's a little bit more in terms of a little bit more detail in terms of not just resources but actually what can you identify a student to do, and rightly and appropriately employers worried about health and safety and we put lots of emphasis on this and rightly and appropriately, we care about the health and safety of students, but I can see how this can be a barrier to employers.
So, I'm not gonna go through every word on this side and say this recording will be shared, but the, words in orange in this text are I think a really good sort of like summary of where the consultation landed for us to absorb and think about how we redesign and approach to School to Work.
So, as I've already said, overwhelming view was work-based learning is important to students, schools and employers. It is a burden for schools and a challenge for schools in terms of sourcing those opportunities which might mean that students miss out. There are gaps and duplication in the system, so in terms of how the operating model is set up it's sometimes confusing for schools and employers and therefore and sometimes the opportunities aren't available. Some students miss out on work-based learning, and we have lot internal data that tells us this to be the case, so but it was I guess useful to hear from stakeholders that particularly from schools that students aren't always having access to those opportunities. And we need to think about that work based learning is not just about access, and high quality is really, really important and how we measure that and what looks like a good quality experience for a student and it's something that needs to be thought about and delivered as part of support to schools.
There are things beyond School to Work. This is really, really important in terms of the heap of enabling activities that the department and schools have to have in place to make sure that students have a good outcome and all of the things that we need to solve to make the work experience in other forms of work based learning really, really beneficial to students, Need to put those things in place as well, and that we need to deliver better value for money and which means that we need to make sure that more students have access and there's equity and quality in terms of what we're delivering and making sure as many students have opportunities to, find as may opportunities as they can.
Okay, I will talk I saw another message about talking louder, so I'm hoping I'm not shouting but I I'll carry on. So some additional themes of messaging, the delivery of School to Work, is inconsistent. So, some schools and stakeholders had really, really strong satisfaction and positive views whilst others expressed a lack of confidence and frustration that they weren't getting the level of service that they, that they needed. The use of 31 separate organisations creates inefficiencies, there's a need for stronger statewide coordination and we need to make sure that we align what we do with other structures and other projects, across the system.
The work-based learning system can be improved and we need to have clarity around roles and responsibilities, fewer interaction points for employers, this comes up a lot when we talk to employers and there is things we can do in terms of enabling activities, particularly in relation to student readiness, employer readiness, and then how we use technology to reduce administrative burden for and stakeholders.
So, this is the slide where we talk about in terms of considering what we heard during consultation and what that means in terms of delivery, and we are super super focused that we need to deliver access, equity and quality, and supply of opportunities for work-based learning for the year's seven to twelve.
So, in terms of what we are proposing will be delivered from 2027 onwards as part of the School to Work program, much of which you will have seen already before, but there are some changes here too. So, School to Work providers will attract and support employees to provide workplace learning for group groups of students which primarily we think will be in early and early years of secondary. We see that as a really, really important part of exploring curiosity for young people so that they can then have an opportunity to then focus that down in terms of work experience or structured workplace learning as part of a VET certificate depending on their subject choices. And the thing that is different in terms of approach is that the School to Work program will also be responsible for supporting school-based apprenticeship and traineeship opportunities. That was already the case in the non gov sector, and but that will also be the case in the government sector from 2027 with the School to Work providers supporting SBATs alongside the Head Start program, which I'll talk a little bit more a little bit later. Every government secondary school and a specialist school will receive support. We anticipate that we will be able to double our volume of support for students in the government sector and we also will be seeing an increase in the level of placement support for the non-government secondary schools as well, acknowledging some of those enabling activities that we talked about earlier, there's things that we're also putting in place in terms of this program. So, we'll be putting transport and accommodation and funding for regional government schools, to overcome the barriers that those students have in terms of accessing opportunities.
And we'll also enable rural and regional students to access opportunities that are not available in their area by having opportunities in either regional or metropolitan areas of Victoria that ring fence for those students in a way that so they can access things that they're not currently able to and also acknowledging that there are certain cohorts of students that really, really do miss out by setting up what we're referring to as an equity and innovation fund to support individual projects that will be very focused on individual cohorts and to access work-based learning in a way that they may be missing out on. To enable us to be able to do this, we are changing our program structure, so we currently deliver this through a 31 model. We will be delivering this through a 17-area structure, which is aligned to the Department of Education's regional model and move from the 31 to the 17, we will be seeking competitive funding proposals from not-for-profit organisations that wish to deliver in one or multiple areas in Victoria.
So that's School to Work specifically, but I'm just gonna talk a little bit in terms of broader, sort of like initiatives before I try and respond to some questions. So, on Tuesday, the Victorian government announced its state budget. In terms of this area, we received a 144.7 Million over four years and 19.5 million on an ongoing basis and annually, and some of these things in terms of the programs are included in this in terms of its My Career Insights, sometimes you will refer to that as Morrisby and School to Work program and Head Start and a pilot around supporting work-based learning and early school levers and embedding that as a feature of secondary education and government schools and we're gonna be doing this in terms of looking in terms of supporting and having targeted support and so to address the barriers around career confidence that stem from disadvantage, use tiered program models to identify the support, different levels of support for different students and making sure that we put things in place in terms of support regional Victoria. And we want to join up experiences, so support schools to link career education and pathway career programs across the entirety of a student journey, and we'll reduce overlaps and duplication between programs with consistent structures to make the system easier to navigate for schools, and I would also add to that in terms of employers cause that sometimes is a barrier in terms of the schools and students to have access to placements, and we really want to reduce workload and administrative burden across the system and we'll work with area teams providing teach resources for flexibility whether it's possible for a smooth transition to new program structures, so change always brings a level of administrative burden and we'll be making sure that we do that in a way that is as efficient as possible.
So, very brief overview in terms of the other programs that I just talked about. So, we will be in terms of career education, we receive funding to extend My Career Insights with it, and you will hear I have an opportunity to hear about more about this going forward, but we'll start, this will start in year seven and have additional support students who need it most and will support lesson plans to support whole school career education from expiration to aspirations and pathways. Exploratory workplace learning in the early years of secondary education with a reshaped School to Work program as I've just talked about, continued vocational taster experiences programs and Skilling the Bay in 2027 and we'll be running the really successful Trade and Tech Fit career expo in 2027.
Head Start has also been funded in 2027, 2028 and 29 and the focus is gonna be in terms of in terms of Head Start funding to support in terms of student support. And as I mentioned earlier, will link to School to Work. So, there'll be a partnership there to make sure that the opportunity, the employment hosts are found through the School to Work program whilst the Head Start program will be supporting the students on their, on their apprenticeship or traineeship journey whilst in school. And the Victorian early leader Connection initiative will continue career advice and targeted support for early school leavers for 27 and 28. We also in terms of embedding access to VET, continuation of funding, which we're now calling the VET administered funding which replaces the JSPC funding to address the workload of arranging VETs and supporting equity, putting in play and continuing VET transport and to address distance barriers and VET clusters will continue to be the primary structure of the place to place a coordination of that with funding school coordination and work is underway to make sure that the school VET system is sustainable, high quality and meets student and industry needs. There's work to be done between now and the end of the year to get this all in place for 2027, so that's some exact detail of how this will be delivered to still being worked through but this is the commitment that we have to deliver.
So, I think this is the final slide before we begin to take questions and I'm not gonna go through this one by one, but I'll just talk about a little bit around the structure here. The things that we have bolded in the blue boxes are things that directly have been funded through the Victorian government budget this year. We see the journey across all, across the six years of secondary education in terms of the early years of being about curiosity, so in year seven it's about discovering, identifying and learning about things that new things exist. Year eight beginning to explore, year nine refining the sort of things that you might be interested in, and then in year ten as an example, we were looking to test that students are able to test so things like work experience and then through years eleven and twelve to really build and finalise what and what those opportunities are.
Okay, so again thank you for your time, thank you for everybody that contributed to the consultation. We will be sharing a video of this session later, and there now is an opportunity to post questions in the Webex chat. I think it's unlikely I will get to all of the questions. I have a team that is putting questions together for me so in terms of like for me to, for me to answer and I will do my very best to get to as many as I can, but for we will have opportunities to sort of like share responses to questions later as we, as we go through the list.
So, I am now, looking at these questions. So, first question is around rurality and barriers in terms of, I think in terms of connectivity, in terms of like distance. What we will absolutely look to do in terms of whether this is through work-based learning or VET is putting in place transport support, the exact detail of how that exactly will work, we're looking to do, but in terms of resourcing at schools to make sure that students are able to connect with transport and we are in the midst of working out the exact detail of how that will work, but we will be in touch and due course, but apps that this came up in the consultation very regularly that distance was a real, a real challenge and therefore that's why we put in place the approach to transport.
A question around Head Start and School to Work. But I just want to be really, really clear, what we're trying to do here is in terms of reducing duplication. So one thing that came out of the consultation we'd already heard this previously, that at times employers and schools found the approach to engaging with industry confusing in terms of that we had one arm of government in terms of Head Start and a funded program in terms of School to Work, sometimes feeling like they were competing with each other, and it could be difficult for students and schools and employers to navigate. So, what, so this will be a fully integrated system where students will want to undertake a school-based apprenticeship traineeship will engage with Head Start as they do now and then Head Start will work with the School to Work program provider in their area to find a suitable host for that SBAT.
And when we talk about region a question around what we mean by regional, does this include rural and remote? Yes. Absolutely.
Question around why we have chosen on 17 and why this can't be centralised to just one. And this is a really, really great question. And it's a question, the answer comes around balance, so we really, really want students to be receiving a consistent service across the State, and we will make sure in terms of our program design that there is consistent expectations across all 17 areas for delivery, but what's really, really, really important is that the service is place-based. What we heard throughout the consultation is that local knowledge of local employers is really, really important, and the risk of moving to a single centralised organisation potentially based in Melbourne or wherever it comes to be is that that there is, it is unlikely that a single organisation would have that understanding of what is needed in Mildura, Lakes Entrance, Maribyrnong, wherever it happens to be. So, we really felt it was important to maintain that place-based angle that we think is the balance of an efficient delivery whilst also really connected.
And there's a question around VET clusters and exactly how that would be arranged. We're still finalising exactly what that looks like. We will be in touch in 2026, so, and yeah, we will be in touch in terms of exactly how their clusters will be arranged later in the year of 2027. A question on how employees expected to engage with 17 different entities? So, and I think this speaks to a little bit around in terms of why we've gone with 17. So, I haven't mentioned this in this presentation, we do also have statewide opportunities team whose role is to try and engage with peak bodies and potentially large employers. We see that the vast majority of employers that engage with school to work are actually place-based and particularly small organisations. But what we're designing our operating model in terms of systems that where a large organisation wants to engage with the school system, that they should engage with statewide opportunities team first and we're setting up systems to make sure that work, which then can triage those opportunities. So if had an organisation that is present in all 17 areas of the state, we would then we would reach out to them to say like, well, do you want to, do you want to provide opportunities in all 17 areas or would you like to have a pilot in a couple of regional rural areas and a couple of metropolitan areas and then maybe expand it and it'll be the role of the statewide opportunities team to sort of like triage those opportunities to the relevant School to Work provider. In terms of VET transport, very exactly the same answer I had in terms of VET clusters, we are working through exactly how the administration and coordination of this will work, so we will be in touch later in 2026 in relation to that.
Question around consistency of 17 areas in terms of provider, so there will be all 17 providers will have the same performance framework, and the contract will be at the at the same elements. There'll be different levels of service expected in each contract dependent on the volume of students in that area and particularly interested in making sure we align resources with supporting those students with the most need. But there'll be absolute consistency in terms of expectations and outcomes, but not necessarily consistency in terms of delivery model because that speaks to exactly and that we want to make sure that things are designed for what works in area for this schools because we don't think the same model of delivery is necessarily gonna work in every part of the state, but just to be absolutely clear, the expectation around outcomes will be consistent and which will be around ensuring that there is adequate access quality and equity in the opportunities that we supply to students.
And in terms of what we can do to increase employer involvement, we work really, really closely with colleagues, for example, in the Victorian Skills Authority, work with peak bodies, and absolutely acknowledge in the way that I showed in the slides early earlier. The barriers, we've in some of our communications in relation to this, we've launched a, website for employers which gives a little bit of information about how to deliver work-based learning well and that's not necessarily an incentive, but we acknowledge that there's more to do in terms of support and a big part of the School to Work program actually will be to make sure that employers are supported by their School to Work provider to make sure that they're well placed to deliver tailored support so that any students that they're hosting. And I think actually there's a question here around making sure students with disabilities, in particular intellectual disability has been supported, that links a little bit around what I just said in terms of support for employers. And so there's a dual role here in terms of so I can talk to access quite quickly in terms of that we are directing our resources in terms of School to Work in relation to making sure that the resources are put in place to support those students that need it most, and making sure that the students that we fund the areas with the concentration of socioeconomic disadvantage or students with disabilities to make sure that we put in place the opportunities for those students to receive support, that particularly work based on particularly transformational for those students and so we will support every school in terms of asking for support from their School to Work provider. But we also need to make sure the School to Work provider puts in place the support for employers to make sure that they have an understanding of what's needed to support them and that will be done through collaboration with the school to make sure that the needs of the students are understood, and there'll also be the potential through the equity and innovation fund maybe a pilot or put in place some programs to support particular cohorts.
And in terms of I have a question around Head Start in terms of its current structure or will there be changes? Similarly to what I've just said around clusters and VET transport, we're working through the final operating model. I think we're pretty close to an understanding of what the structure will look like, but I'm not able to give any sort of like firm commitment at this stage, but we will be in touch as soon as soon as we're able to do that.
And a really, really great question, so I can read that how it's raised in terms of it says that I'm in a, in a large school in Western Melbourne with over 500 students requiring work experience in SWL, the current model allocates 22 places for the LLEN to support. And I think this is a really good way of explaining in terms of I think the model challenges currently, what we're looking to put in place, but also acknowledging probably we won't be able to solve for everything. So, the evidence that we have is that the vast majority of students self-source their opportunities. So, and this is kind of a really positive thing but a real challenge in the system as well. So, what this means is that there's an advantage for students with high levels of social capital typically from advantaged socioeconomic background who are able to find those opportunities. And what we really, really want to make sure is that we resource this model in such a way that supports those students that don't have those advantages and therefore we want to prioritise and providing support to those very students. So, a change we made in 2026 was to say every government school had an entitlement with the acknowledgement that what we provided was based upon the current model of how many levels of support that we are able to deliver. Through the redesign of this program, we're hoping that we're gonna be able to double the volume of students that are supported and also allocate our funding in such a way to make sure that there's more funding available to the School to Work providers to support the most disadvantaged students. What that doesn't mean in this example is that the School to Work provider will be able to support 500 students. We think there's, we don't have a perfect data on this, but there's upwards of 40 or 50 thousand work experience and structured workplace learning placements that that go on each year or we think should be going on this year when we look at the student populations, that we do not have the resource levels to be able to support placements for all of those students. But what we're really gonna be doing is prioritising those students that wouldn't be able to find opportunities without this program.
A question around how we work with employer and industry associations. We regularly work with peak bodies for and unions through the connections as I mentioned with the VSA. We really, really value those partnerships and they're, very powerful advocates what we're doing and what they, what they consistently tell us is that that many of their members really, really want to connect, but are not able to currently and don't know how to connect with schools. So, one of the things that we're trying to put in place is this efficient model through the same opportunities as I mentioned earlier, if they're sort of smaller to medium place-based organisations and then it's really, really clear in terms of how they can connect with the School to Work provider.
Sorry, I'm reading through a list of questions, a really good question in terms of I mentioned earlier around the competitive funding proposal process, in terms of will we be valuing efficiency or valuing quality and I'm probably dodging the question a little bit, but I think we deeply care about both. So, we will be balancing that we really want to increase access, but not at the expense of low quality and outcomes or experiences, students that are probably pertinently in employers that are not well supported in terms of supporting students is a bad experience for students and employers. But we really have put a lot of I'm gonna use this an opportunity to plug for government schools and the work-based learning app. We really, really care about quality. We're already beginning to see some fantastic trends in the data that we're seeing from the work-based learning app across in terms of the sort of statewide data, in terms of what quality looks like, where there are gaps, and so we were continuing to use the work- based learning app as a way of our understanding of quality, so in no way do we are we compromising quality. That's my summary there.
And a direct question in terms of what will Local Learning Employment's role be within the revised program? So Local Learning Employment networks, obviously we really value the partnership that we have with them, and they will be invited as other not for profit organisations to submit funding proposals for the 17 model that I've addressed earlier, and we look forward to working with them for the remainder of 2026. I didn't maybe a question I don't know if I got that question but that in terms of 2026, the program is unchanged by any of this announcement.
Will the School to Work portal remain in operation and will there be a connection between the portal and the web-based learning app? We will come back to you with more detail in relation to that. We're doing a lot of work in terms of making sure our technology is aligned and sort of like joined up. I acknowledge at the moment there's some sort of like double doing in terms of administration in terms of that sometimes there's an intersect between the two, but we are, all our work is for 2027 so fully addressed that and that we have a technology solution that fully intersects with each other and removes duplication from process.
I'm reading a, sorry, processing question in terms of will schools be expected to work with School to Work providers, is there a choice for schools and some other new 17 areas of the monopoly of businesses? And there's quite a few questions there. There isn't necessarily an expectation for schools to work with School to Work providers. However, is our belief that that what we're putting in place here means that this is a fantastic service for schools and is the best like provide schools with the best opportunities for, to support their students, particularly those that struggle to find opportunities, but there's absolutely the choice if a school chooses not to engage with their School to Work provider, but that that they have agency to make that choice. In terms of whether the School to Work provider will have a monopoly on the businesses, no, in no way can a School to Work provider say to a business that you were the only way that you're able to engage in the school system and the organisations won't have the authorisation to do that.
A question around whether the 17 providers will work together across regions. Yes, we will set things up in such a way that allows for collaboration across the network of School to Work providers. I think that's really, really important. There's so whether that looks like things like, communities of practice for them to learn what works in particular areas and if that and we will also be thinking about in terms of how we use our technology to have a better understanding of how we're engaging with organised businesses. So, there’ll be ways of potentially sharing information so if to School to Work providers working with the same employer. What that means in terms of a relationship and such like.
Okay, another question around quality and how do we measure quality in terms of workplace learning? I love this question because we've spent a lot of time thinking about this, this very thing. I said earlier to an earlier question that quality was really, really important and though we really care about like sort of like quantity in terms of access, that is never gonna be the expensive quality. So, I think the two things that we sort of really, really value in terms of quality is the alignment with student interest and, the any placement that they're willing to do. So, I think too much at the moment we see students being placed in things that are available whilst not necessarily aligned to future career aspirations, so we need a breadth of opportunities available for students, and one of the questions in the workplace learning app that we have is around, did the, did your work experience or structured workplace learning placement provide you insight in terms of whether this is something that you want to do as a career later? Now, we see a student that does a work experience opportunity and says, I thought I'd pick a random example I thought I wanted to be a plumber, but having undertaken this work experience, I don't want to be a plumber I thought it was well designed program and place and everything, but I now don't think that's something, we see that as a really big success because that means that student now has, more information says what they want to do, what they want to do next and what they don't want to do. And so, we'll be using that breadth and alignment with what students want and whether it in whether that placement informs their opportunities later on is a way of measuring quality.
Question around industry associations, absolutely we work closely with industry associations to take their views and really like they play an important role. A question around, $5 a day. And now this is a really great broader work-based learning policy question. We've actually done a bit of work this year in terms of trying to further understand the status of the $5 a day and absolutely it is not what we hear isn't employers not wishing to pay students. In many cases employers want to pay students more than $5 a day, but the challenge is the world we live in of administration bureaucracy where nobody has access to cash anymore and a work experience student is not an employee in the same way as somebody who gets paid, so the mechanisms of payment. And it’s really, really hard. I can't offer a direct answer to that question other than that we acknowledge that this is a real challenge and barrier. We have begun some work on this. We did some consultation this year, and we are looking to put things in place that resolve this but absolutely acknowledge that it is a barrier.
And I think my we're at 10:45, so my final question I'm gonna answer is this question around how do we find out who our School to Work contact is, and so and I don't know where that question relates to 2026 or 2027. In 2026, the answer. You can look up the School to Work program on the website, you will find links to find who your Local Learning and Employment Network is delivering School to Work. We are unsaying the competitive funding proposal process as I said earlier, and we will be sharing the outcomes of that when that's all finalised later in the year. Okay, I've reached 10:45, which is the end time.
A final thank you to everybody for your time this morning, and I think most importantly, thank you for your passion and enthusiasm for the role of work-based learning in and transforming young people's lives. We in the department deeply hold that for you, which is why we're putting so much effort and thought into how we how we approach this. Thank you everyone for your time and hope you have a wonderful rest of the week.
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