Going to uni in WA in 2024. A Comprehensive Guide
2023 Year 10 Magic Happens Handbook and Teachers’ Guide – Out Now
Year 10 Magic Happens Handbook
The Year 10 Magic Happens career handbook is designed specifically for students in Western Australia. As you begin your journey in Year 10, you stand at the door of your future, full of possibilities and potential. This handbook is here to guide you as you explore your interests, find your dreams, and make your plan for the future. Whether you’re still trying to figure out what you want to do after school or you already know what career path you want to pursue, this handbook will provide you with the resources and information you need to succeed. So, let’s get started and make the most of this exciting time in your life!
Get your copy HERE.
“My 2023 Footprint”career education resource for the start of 2023
Give students a copy of this poster and get them to fill it out at the start of the year.
It is a great way to get to know your students and it is a terrific way to get the kids to reflect on their own lives at the start of the year.
At the end of the term, semester or year get the students to check out their poster to see how they have changed.
Subscribe to In Focus Careers News for West Australian schools
Is the uni bus right for you?
Are your friends going to uni? Do you have FOMO?
Did the drivers of the uni bus visit you at school and sell you a ride?
Are your parents frightened that if you don’t get off the bus you will get lost?
Just because the university bus is ready to pick you up from school, doesn’t mean that you have to get on.
Maybe you need to wait for the next bus. Maybe you want to get on the backpacker bus. Or the travel bus. Or the Harvest Trail bus. Or the job bus.
If you are not sure what to do at uni, DON’T GET ON THE BUS.
Defer University for a Year
If you are not sure what course you want to do, you can still apply for a place at uni and, once you get offered a place, defer taking it up for a year.
After working for a year you will have a clearer idea about which units to enrol in.
Check out Year 12 What Next? Gap Year Ideas for 2022.
The Uni Bus Fare is Expensive
Buying a uni course is not like buying a car. You can’t sell your used course to the next buyer who comes along.
If you get off the bus before you get to the destination YOU STILL HAVE TO PAY.
If you fail, you still have to pay.
If you change courses, you still have to pay for the part you used of the one you left behind.
TAFE
There are hundreds of courses available through TAFE. If you are unsure what course you might like to do or how to enrol find a Jobs and Skills Centre near you for career guidance.
Many TAFE courses are now on a free list.
You can do a trade course or a course that reflects 21st Century jobs in cyber security, dental technology, and agriculture.
Lots of TAFE courses earn credits at uni.
Still not sure which ride is best for you?
If you are tired of trying to decide what to do and feeling overwhelmed by your choices it may be time to think about hiring a Certified Career Advisor to guide you towards your ideal next chapter.
Contact me for a confidential discussion at M:0434056412 or Bev.J@infocus-careers.com.au
Infocus Careers is an independent organisation which is solely supported by insanely great subscribers who share information with me, support each other and help me to pay my bills.
I can talk about careers under water so if you would like to chat about how I can help you to improve your career or the services you deliver, give me a ring on 0434056412 or email me at Bev.J@infocus-careers.com.au
Make 2023 brilliant for career practitioners in WA schools
This has been an amazing year for career practice in Western Australia.
We have:
- 70 new career positions in government schools and many non-government schools are advertising for career practitioners.
- The Year 9 Career Taster Program
- The Career Connect Conference
- A booming Career Development Association
- More industry support for career development.
Check out details on how far we have come at WA Career Education was a Tipping Point Year in 2022
In 2023 we need to consolidate the role of career practitioners so that they become a permanent robust force that delivers guidance, hope and optimism to West Australians. Try these three practical steps to make 2023 brilliant.
Step 1: Avoid Stress, Fatigue and Burnout. Take these steps
COVID isn’t going to disappear and teacher shortages are going to get worse in 2023. Here are some practical steps to fix your workplace.
In July the WA government released a new Code of Practice for Psychosocial Hazards under the OH&S legislation that says workplaces can’t continue to make you stressed, fatigued and burnt out. It covers things like:
- Inadequate support
- Lack of role clarity
- Poor change management
- Poor or no policies and procedures
In August the government introduced a Code for Dealing with Violence and Aggression at Work which specifically identifies lecturers, teachers and teacher aides as being vulnerable targets for this sort of behaviour from students. It also identifies strategies for making your workplace better.
Practical Action
The Code of Practice for Psychosocial Hazards in the Workplace identifies strategies for making your workplace better.
- Put it on the agenda at staff meetings.
- Give a copy to your School Well-Being Committee
- Give a copy to your school executive
- Ask for progress reports.
Step 2: Look after your professional career
2.1 Professional Development for Career Practice
You need to consolidate your knowledge and skills as a career practitioner by going to the:
- events put on by unis for career practitioners
- opportunities provided by your employers (Department of ED, AISWA and CEAWA)
- CDAA face-to-face and online events for career practitioners
- Careers and Skills Expos
Practical Action
Get in early. Make sure your boss understands that knowledge of opportunities emerging outside the school is critical to your work. Book early if professional opportunities require time out of school.
2.2 Professional Development for YOUR Career
There is no career path for career practitioners within schools. After a few years, you will be able to take your professional knowledge and skills into new roles.
You need to look to where you want to be next, check out what you need for those jobs and start building those skills.
Practical Action
- Promotion with Existing Employer: If you want to get a promotion with your current employer, identify what role you would like, and what skills you require and start demonstrating leadership against those skills so that you will be chosen for acting roles.
- Changing Sectors within Education: If you want to move to a university or a Jobs and Skills Centre role, find available jobs and what skills you need. Start attending career development breakfasts in your area or online, and get known by practitioners from other sectors.
- Working for Industry: If you want to move into an industry, check which industry you want to move into, and find possible jobs and job descriptions. Start developing your industry-specific skills and building relationships with people in those industries. Start attending career development breakfasts in your area or online, and get known by practitioners from other industries.
- Private Practice: If you want to start your own professional practice, start doing small business management courses
Step 3: Go for Awards, Competitions, Scholarships and Grants
We tell kids to go for awards, competitions and scholarships. We need to take our own advice.
- Awards and Competitions: It feels great to get an award or win a competition. Being recognised for your work feels great and it looks good on job applications. I mention awards like Women in Leadership awards and teaching awards in the In Focus Careers News whenever I find them. Under the “Outreach Opportunities” heading you will find opportunities to enter your school in competitions like the RoboCup or Lego League. Just entering will boost your ranking when applying for jobs, winning is best of course!!
- Scholarships: We tell kids to research scholarships all of the time but we don’t take our own advice. Opportunities, like the Churchill Fellowship, come up each year. Some are paid, and others required you to take LSL or leave without pay. They are great to win, you get to study something you love and you get to become more expert in our industry.
- Grants: You can usually get a project to happen by working 24/7. You will nearly kill yourself and once you leave the project will collapse without you driving it. If you work full-time, you will not have time to take on something new, unless you drop something that is not a priority. Finding resources to support a new project is the best way to go. Bendigo Bank is available to support lots of endeavours in schools. If you are in the bush, the Rabo Bank may support your work. Lots of grants get advertised through the Fremantle Grants Guru and your P&C will be eligible for grants to volunteer organisations from the Lotteries Commission.
Practical Action
- Identify which award, competition, grant or scholarship you want to go for, based on your current priorities.
- Let your boss know what you are doing and get their imprimatur.
- Start work on your project plan.
Together we can do great things in 2023
We are on a roll in WA.
We have made such amazing progress in 2022 but our work needs to be consolidated through conscious and deliberate action to build a robust career industry in WA.
Together we can do great things in 2023
Subscribe to the only careers newsletter in Australia, designed to enlighten educators about local trends, ideas and new approaches to the career challenges for school students.
Bev Johnson Director, In Focus Careers
WA Career Education 2022 was a tipping point year.
We started on a high, and the year just got better.
There were 2 big career education initiatives from WA Government in 2022 that were the biggest thing since the launch of the Jobs and Skills centres:
- The Department of Education employed 70 designated Career Practitioners and enrolled them in a postgraduate Diploma of Career Education. This has had a trickle-down effect in the Catholic Education and Independent School sectors with jobs for career educators now being advertised.
- The Year 9 Career Taster Program was launched by the Department of Training and Workforce Development. This initially targeted the new Career Practitioners and grants were then made available for any schools to apply for. Industry and schools are starting to set up collaborations, with employers offering work experience, being guest speakers and doing tours of their worksites.
These initiatives have stretched workers to breaking point.
Here is a month-by-month summary of the big career events for 2022 and some predictions for 2023
February 2022
70 New Career Educators in WA Government Schools
To paraphrase Tom Peters:
when you look back at a project you can always see what you could have done better.
The Career Practitioner initiative that the Ed Dept launched in schools at the start of the year, was like a juggernaut.
Once it got rolling, it couldn’t be stopped by pandemics, lack of know-how, COVID-driven relief classes or resistance from rusted-on traditional school systems.
EVERY new career practitioner struggled.
Many considered leaving.
Some left.
Congratulations to those who survived. You are the leaders who join West Australian career practitioners who are leading new approaches to the career challenges of today and tomorrow.
Career Connect Conference
We went ahead with the Notre Dame/CDAA Career Connect conference despite COVID concerns because career practitioners rely on it to hear what is new and emerging for the year.
We opened the big glass doors, which made the PowerPoints hard to read and we didn’t share microphones, which made people hard to hear.
Uni Rankings
- ECU and Notre Dame blitzed the undergraduate student ranking scores again, coming in second and third in Australia after Bond University. It is pretty cool to have two such high-ranking universities based in WA.
- There was a jump in ATAR cut-off scores for non-STEM degrees, particularly Education Degrees.
NERO and JEDI
NERO and JEDI online services were launched. I initially criticised the ridiculous strangled acronyms that the National Careers Commission created to describe:
- employment trends (Nowcast of Employment by Regions and Occupations) and
- skills and employment into clusters (Jobs and Education Data Infrastructure).
I still think the acronyms are crazy, but both services provide fantastic information that helps career practitioners do their job better.
March 2022
VET staggers under booming numbers
By March VET numbers in WA were up over 30% on 2021 figures and female VET students had increased by 40%.
VET providers were having a hard time finding enough lecturers and the students must have been hanging from the rafters.
Unis
All of the unis brought their open days forward from August to April/May to capture students as they applied for early offers.
Borders Opened
After restricting entry to WA for a couple of years, we opened our borders. COVID starts to hit WA hard and the skills shortage doesn’t change.
Career Conversations Start Touring
The Dept of Education started touring the state with its Career Conversations for parents.
Gender barriers start to break down
The shortage of workers in traditional male industries resulted in a surge in strategies to attract women into STEM, building and resource industry jobs.
We started getting photos of real women who don’t look like they are out of a Barbarella movie ad.
April 2022
Job ad numbers are up again
Job vacancies continued to soar in WA and our economy continued to boom.
Gap Year programs emerge from hibernation
The gap year programs started up again after two years of COVID lockdown. There seem to be more of them and they are more diverse.
Uni Outreach Programs
Was there an upturn in the number of school outreach programs that universities were running? When the pandemic hit unis closed down many programs and put off staff, like Kim Flintoff who used to run the biggest uni outreach programs in WA. In April I started to see more opportunities for schools to engage with unis.
May 2022
May was a big month for me so I lost the career focus a bit:
- My Mum died.
- The government changed
- I got COVID
June 2022 
- We got a Minister who knows what he is doing and VET got a big boost in status and resources.
- Jobs and Skills Australia replaced the National Skills Commission.
- The new government’s focus on climate change targets was clearly an idea ready to happen. New “green” courses and research initiatives were launched.
- Career Educators in WA schools started getting calls from employers asking if they had any kids who would be suitable for work.
- Year 9 Career Taster Program got going.
July 2022
- The worker shortage bit hard. Employers looked to new potential employers. It was hard to find a photo of a male in ads for engineering degrees, STEM courses and building trades.
- New opportunities emerged for neurodiverse and physically disabled people.
- Aged and childcare trainers started to recruit males and the industry conditions improved.
- Changes to the OS&H Act brought a Workplace Code of Practice that will hopefully make workplaces a nicer place to be.
August 2022
New Federal Government Departments
The government separated the work done by the Department of Education, Skills and Employment into:
- a stand-alone Department of Education – to drive better outcomes through access to quality education and learning and
- a Department of Employment and Workplace Relations – to enable access to quality skills, training and employment to support Australians find secure work in fair, productive and safe workplaces
SkillsWest Expo
Half of the stalls seemed to be associated with the resources industry. There were also lots of stalls for people with special needs.
Not many stalls were just a person with a brochure this year. They had all upped their game like the Turf Management people had a hole-in-one competition. It was great.
September 2022
- Jobs and Skills Summit came up with 4 priorities:
-
-
- A better-skilled, better-trained workforce
- addressing skills shortages and strengthening the migration system
- Boosting job security and wages and creating safe, fair and productive workplaces
- Promoting equal opportunities and reducing barriers to employment
-
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- The Good Theory Good Practice Conference was held and I don’t know how we can better it next year. We had a brilliant time.
- Unis started running a second open day for the year.
- Employment conditions for horticulture/agriculture backpackers improved.
October 2022
- Year 12 school leavers snapped up by eager employers
- Skills shortages result in new strategies to recognise existing skills.
- Career resource vendors started hitting WA schools with products and services.
- Career Practitioners mourned after Midnight Oil’s final concert in Perth
Predictions for 2023: Consolidation
“Lethargy” hits workers
Career practitioners from other states are reporting what they are calling “lethargy” as workers choose NOT to put work as their #1 priority. They are no longer focusing on productivity outcomes achieved through paid work.
Workers are ignoring the pleas of employers and kicking back, refusing promotions, not doing overtime and leaving their jobs. They are focusing on their relationships, saving the environment, fitness, learning and creativity.
Strategies employed by career practitioners may need to refocus.
Employers become engaged with school education
As the worker shortage hit, 2022 saw growth in employer awareness of their need to be good employers.
2023 will see more employers engaging with schools and supporting the development of students’ awareness of the world of work.
Barriers between school, work and community will become more porous as education becomes more holistic.
Online education improves
On Q&A in August this year author Johan Hari said:
Online sex is okay but it isn’t as good as the real thing.
I feel the same about online learning. It can’t capture the richness of the physical world.
But, online learning allows us to engage with different opportunities, so we will get better at it. We will break away from hard corporate presentations and attempt to make them more human by introducing warm data wherever possible.
Green Careers Surge
Peter Dutton famously derided Pacific Islander complaints about Australia’s response to global warming by asking:
How long can they tread water?
The east coast of Australia is being hit so hard by floods that green careers will get more attention than they already have from this government.
Watch for job titles that you have never seen before, and micro-credential that rapidly add green technical skills to existing qualifications.
Micro-Credentials
The VET Sector can introduce new developments by updating one unit of competency and qualified workers can quickly take that recognised unit.
In 2023 Universities will come up with micro-credential standards that give them more flexibility to support change.
Career Product Vendors in WA
The boom in career services in WA has stimulated a boom in the number of companies coming to WA with their career development products. Virtual reality products are the most common and they are popular because students can explore workplaces without the need for the rigours of excursion bureaucracy.
Many vendors are harvesting personal data. See Data is the new oil.
I hope In Focus Careers continues to be the #1 Career Product in your workplace. 
That’s a Wrap for 2022
Subscribe to my Insanely Great Careers Newsletter to discover trends, career ideas and new approaches to the career problems of today and tomorrow.
Ideas to create a strategy to save the planet at your school
Being a garbo used to be the worst job. Now garbos have much more status. There are jobs at every level and the range of jobs is set to increase as new technologies emerge.
Get the Study Guide HERE.
These resources and ideas can help you to develop skills for a career saving the planet:
Not for profit/charities/social enterprise
Excellent for volunteering opportunities, and entrepreneurial aspirations and can lead to jobs in other waste organisations.
These are some examples:
- Plastic Free July Foundation
- Keep Australia Beautiful Council WA – Adopt-a-Spot Program or Community Clean Up
- Tangaroa Blue Foundation – beach clean-ups.
- Repair Labs /Repair Cafes -people can volunteer to repair items for other people to avoid items being thrown away,
- FairGame – youth charity donating gently used sports equipment to kids in need.
- GiveWrite – youth charity donating new/near new stationery to kids in need.
- Dismantle – youth charity giving troubled youth and old bicycles a new life through their mentoring programs.
- Hello Initiative – reusing old mobile phones with kids in the juvenile justice system.
- Charities and op shops – reusing unwanted clothes and bric-a-brac to support the circular economy and those in need. Always looking for volunteers to help in the store.
Food waste avoidance
- FEAST school-based program for Yr 5-6 students. STEM-based, and focused on food preparation skills.
- OzHarvest Perth – volunteer food packer, driver, etc. Variety of roles, paid and unpaid.
- Secondbite – variety of roles designed to avoid food waste and address food security, paid and unpaid.
- Foodbank WA – variety of roles addressing food security and food waste – paid and unpaid.
- RichGro – diverting organic waste from landfill by turning it into quality compost.
- Community gardens – examples include Earthwise in Subiaco, St Luke’s in Mosman Park and North Fremantle Social Farm. Learn how to grow your own food, live sustainably and get to know your local community.
Small business
these are some people I know who have converted their passion for waste management into a business
- WRITE Solutions – environmentally sustainable business expertise
- Sustainable Salons – low-waste hairdressing
- Donut Waste – business collecting and recycling beer clips and coffee grinds
- Treading my own path – blogger, influencer promoting sustainable, low waste living
- Lessen with Peg – learning how to compost and live with less waste
Federal Government
Supporting initiatives (only a handful mentioned here):
- Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment & Water – see Recycling Modernisation Fund investing $800 million into new recycling initiatives and markets
- Australian Renewable Energy Agency – see Kwinana Waste to Energy Project
- Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment – National Plastics Plan 2021
State Government
- Department of Water and Environment Regulation (DWER) – have a graduate program called Choose your Environment. The Waste Authority also sits within DWER, running the Be a GREAT Sort community campaign and the WasteSorted Schools Program
- Western Australia Return Recycle Renew (WARRR) – set up Containers for Change recycling program in WA. Has been a great social enterprise initiative and employer for people with disabilities.
Local Government
Jobs on offer are both operational and administrative.
- Operational jobs involve skills in hauling, sorting, managing waste safely, efficiently and effectively. Operational jobs include Drivers, Labourers, Multi-System Operators, Recycling Centre Attendants, Depot Managers, Operations Managers, Recycling Sorters.
- Administrative roles involve skills in community education, marketing, communications, social media, website management, accounts, governance and project management. Administrative roles are often advertised as: Waste Education Officer, Marketing & Communications Officer, Project Officer, Community Education Officer, Waste Projects Coordinator, Waste Minimisation Officer, Sustainability and Environment Officer, Bin-Taggers. Depending on the role, administrative jobs might require a Bachelor Degree in Sustainability, Health Promotion, Marketing, Community Development, Finance, Accounting, Commerce, etc.
- WA Local Government Association – Click here to see their current projects and programs in waste and the environment. Also worth subscribing to their fortnightly waste e-newsletter WasteNet and their environment and climate change newsletter EnviroNews. Rebecca Brown is the Manager, of Waste, Recycling & Environment.
- Regional Councils & Local Councils – big employers in municipal waste collection and community waste education and sustainability, giving voice to community concerns and providing feedback to WALGA and State Government to inform policy.
Commercial
Examples include:
- Waste management/recovery
- East Rockingham Waste to Energy plant – landfill sites are closing in WA. Residual waste that cannot be recycled will go to waste to energy plants to generate electricity. The plant is due to open by the end of 2022 and will generate new jobs.
- Avertas Energy – another waste-to-energy plant in Kwinana is due to open soon and will also generate new jobs.
- Veolia – international waste and energy company. Find out more about their graduate program on their career page. Great if you fancy travelling interstate and overseas too.
- Cleanaway – international waste and energy recovery company. Also have a careers program and 31 jobs in WA available at the moment.
- SUEZ – international waste and energy company bought out by Veolia. They also have a careers program.
Recyclers
- Remondis – see their careers page for the types of jobs they offer
- Total Green Recycling – electronic waste recycling. They have a workplace learning program for school students
- CLAW Environmental – polystyrene and plastic recyclers
- Ecocycle – battery and mercury recyclers
Thanks to Hazel Hodgkins for all of the information for this post.
Work Smarter – Discover people, trends and career ideas for the future
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Data is the new oil. Don’t tell strangers what you love.
Whoever owns the data owns the future
Yuval Noah Harari 21 Lessons for the 21st century.
What do you love?
We do buckets of online personality tests, career quizzes and psychometric tests as we sift through our options for the best, brilliant future that we love.
The more tests we do, the more test owners can build their information about us into a personal profile. They link their data with data collected by others and build your profile. The older you get, the more they know about you. You become a commodity to be manipulated and used to their advantage.
Handing over our information to strangers online is like giving our house keys to strangers and letting them in.
Don’t hand over personal information online without knowing:
- That it will ONLY be used for the stated purpose.
- If it is going to be stored in Australia. (It probably won’t be.)
- When they are going to delete it. (Optus has details of customers who left them years ago.)
It’s the law. There are 13 rules (principles) that guide privacy in Australia. You can find the principles in the Australian Privacy law HERE.
This Download This Show podcast warns:
Data is the new oil. Companies want our information. The company that owns our data and can analyze it and make sense of it, owns the future.
Manal al-Sharif, Tech4evil podcast on Download this Show @ 8m17sec
Companies are not in the business of giving stuff away. They have to get something out of it. Most companies offering “free” services do not have strict rules about how they are going to use the information that you hand over. If they are not being straight with you about what they are going to do with your information once they have it, don’t hand it over.
Keep doing quizzes
You need all the help you can get to unearth your best path through life.
When you start looking for quizzes go for government sites like MyFuture which have strict rules about what information they collect and how they use it. Check their privacy policy as an example of what is okay.
It is long.
It needs to be.
You can check out these sites and be reasonably sure they will not be using your information to harm you or try to sell you something. But don’t assume they have great privacy and security to protect your personal information. I bet every organisation is revising its privacy and security strategies after the Optus debacle.
If you are unsure, ask me bev.J@infocus-careers.com.au. I won’t be able to see their security regime but I will be able to check to see if they are complying with the Privacy Law.
Work smarter. Discover people, trends and career ideas to become a leader with new approaches to the career challenges of today and tomorrow.
Subscribe to In Focus Careers News
I bet you’re not coping with COVID-delivered stresses at school. These experts may be able to help.
Schools have not been great in 2022.
We are not the only ones struggling to cope with staff shortages, systems breaking and clients needing more. The oil, gas, health, aged care, child care, agriculture and maritime industries are in the same boat and schools around Australia are struggling to create systems to help teachers to cope so that they can help students to thrive.
COVID is showing up cracks that had been papered over in good times by people going beyond their job descriptions to make the systems work.
Sound familiar?
Breakfast with champions
This morning I had breakfast with Jen Sheridan, Danielle Kabilio and Dr Sherrilyn Mills at Social Manna in Vic Park. They are all consultants who are working with organisations to stop COVID-delivered workplace crises.
Sherrilyn is a psychosocial, occupational health, and wellbeing specialist.
Danielle works on psychosocial health, helping stressed people and stressed workplaces.
Jen is an executive coach who is working with education departments in other states.
They are experts in developing strategies to create better-functioning workplaces. The new West Australian Occupational Health and Safety Psychological Hazards in the Workplace Code of Practice is now guiding workplaces on what they should aim for. Schools in 2022 aren’t coming close. Things are probably much worse now than they were three years ago.
Principals struggling to create healthy workplaces
I have heard of principals bringing the new Code of Practice to meetings, and showing it to staff. I haven’t heard of any school that has developed a strategy to comply with this new requirement. Schools have been too busy doing crisis management.
Schools are going to have to comply with the West Australian Code. It isn’t a “nice to have” bonus.
If you are trying to find ways through this really tough year in the workplace, you could try contacting one of these experts. They may be able to set you in the right direction. It may be possible for a group of schools to collaborate with these consultants to create better workplaces by 2023 rather than facing another year of crisis management.
Subscribe to In Focus Careers News to help your students to thrive.
It’s not easy being green. How do I find a green career?
Most of the green jobs seem to be in conservation and land management, but this will change.
Last week the Clean Energy Council ran a webinar where they talked about:
- courses for wind turbine engine repairers
- courses for repairers of wind turbine blades
- growing demand for electric vehicle mechanics (who need electrical skills)
- the complexity of designing and installing solar systems on houses.
Volunteering
There are some big volunteer sites where you can find opportunities in many different industries:
This map of Green Volunteering opportunities may help students easily find and explore ways to engage in green careers.
