28 Oct 2019
Turning some of the world’s biggest companies into classrooms has opened doors for students in western Sydney.
When Tim Lloyd returned as principal to Plumpton High School – the school where he had started teaching – he could feel the need for a culture shift.
“The kids were disengaged,” Mr Lloyd said. “There were a lot of kids working really hard for a HSC that they didn’t necessarily know where that would take them or what it meant for them.”
The solution: create links with industry to bring a “level of authenticity into the classroom”.
Mr Lloyd discussed the long list of partnerships with Secretary Mark Scott on the Every Student Podcast.
“It goes for pages and pages and pages,” Mr Scott said. “Everyone from Microsoft and Google but also American Express, Citigroup, the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Commonwealth Bank, the ABC, … just on and on and on.”
According to Mr Lloyd the program has been as much a learning experience for the multinational companies as for his students.
“Those industries … can then go out and see that our 66 cultures at Plumpton [High School] have got the same potential as every other person working in this place and let's give them a go because they work really hard,” he said.
Mr Lloyd said he had seen the difference in his students’ attitudes.
“Things become less foreign and they become achievable and attainable because the kids are immersed in it,” he said.
“And as such our kids come back far more engaged because it is less abstract, it’s concrete, it’s things they’re engaged in that they would be engaged in following a university degree or TAFE course.
“And they’re working at second- and third-year university level in Year 7, 8, 9 and 10. And they’re succeeding – that in itself builds self-concept and a keenness then to continue to challenge themselves intellectually.”
Listen to the full episode now:
