Empowering Women in Energy: from Classroom to Career explores the crucial role of STEM education for girls in shaping a workforce ready to lead the energy transition, highlighting the importance of early STEM engagement for girls and the diverse opportunities it creates for future leaders in clean energy.
UNSW Digital Grid Futures Institute is delighted to be able to offer recordings of the SOLD OUT event that was held in Sydney in June 2024. It is offered in four parts, reflecting the agenda of the in-person event hosted by EY.
The following transcript is for the third segment of the event: Sustaining STEM Engagement in Girls.
Transcript
Annika Freyer:
So, I'm Annika Freyer. I'm the CEO of the Champions of Change Coalition. I'm delighted to be joined by my fellow panelists to facilitate this panel and the focus really is on, you know, engaging with young girls in the pipeline for STEM. So, thank you so much.
Delighted to have with me, as you can see, Anna-Grace, who you've already met. We've also got Simone Hughes from the Rutherford Technology High School and Sandra Moore from the New South Wales Department of Education.
Before diving into the panel, I thought I might give a bit of context about the Champions of Change Coalition. So, our movement started about 14 years ago, and we're a coalition of over 260 CEOs working collaboratively to drive change on gender equality with the overarching goal to achieve inclusive gender equality in our workplaces within a generation. And we have groups across multiple industries and sectors from fire and emergency services to STEM, from energy to sport, all working together with a shared ambition to derive that change. It engages at the CEO level to ensure that leaders are personally listening, learning, and leading to leverage all of the systems and processes within their organisations to deliver on that change.
And then a bit more about the energy group. That group was just launched a little over 12 months ago, and it's got 21 organisations - and many of them represented here today, which is so wonderful to see - spanning energy generation, production, distribution, retail and resources across Australia.
And the group's purpose is really to harness women's expertise, innovation, and insights as part of Australia's trillion-dollar energy transition. You can see the CEOs are prioritised on gender equality, because we want to ensure that women are equally represented, engaged and benefiting from that major transformation.
So, our priorities for that group, the work plan, there's a very specific work plan, include developing women leaders at all levels, creating inclusive workplaces and enabling more women and girls to pursue careers in the energy sector.
In terms of the current focus with only 26% female representation in the workforce, and that's data from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, the group is dedicated as the topic here today on attracting and sustaining female talent.
Gotta focus on a few key initiatives, and then I'll speak to a specific project that we're actually partnering with EY on, on the talent pipeline.
So, we've got a project on promoting a culture of respect, everyday respect across the sector, because all the efforts you can do on pipeline will not have the impact that you are looking for, if once women enter the workforce, they're not supported with an inclusive environment to thrive.
Another focus is ensuring women have access to appropriate PPE for frontline roles. Have to say it's a shocker that's still an issue, but it certainly is, and that's actually a collaborative initiative across our coalition, fire and emergency services and all other organisations in industrial and manufacturing settings. The Defence Force as well who's a member, are all facing similar issues.
So, working together on innovative approaches to drive change and addressing barriers to career progression and examining gender pay gaps. Those tough spots within the organisation that are causing those pervasive pay gaps. Not in like-for-like roles. The overall gender pay gap that reflects representation differentials from hierarchical and occupational segregation.
And then of course as I spoke about or alluded to, focusing on and understanding and enhancing of the talent pipeline. And so we're partnering with EY and the idea is to develop innovative strategies and leverage those that are already in place across education, vocation, professional and international pipelines. So, the project is supported by the CEOs personally, and subject matter experts, and there are really three key components, quite straightforward.
First is desktop research - so that's looking at all of the programs, what's working and what isn't. Interviews – so, really listening and learning from the experiences of women in the sector and leaders who are trying to drive change. And then holding design thinking workshops, which EY is leading, to focus on engaging people in culture leaders and their teams to develop creative and innovative solutions. So, really exciting work that fits in perfectly with the discussion of our panel here today.
So, I won't delay more, and I might start with you, Simone, and ask sort of a big, broad question around why is it different for girls, and what's their experience with STEM engagement?
Simone Hughes:
Okay, good morning, all. So, I'm Simone Hughes. I'm the very proud principal of Rutherford Technology High School.
So, we are a school on the western side of Maitland in the Hunter Valley. 1,450 students, 300 of those Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander. Low socioeconomic, with a changing community.
So, in the Upper Hunter we have the mining industry, and as we know coal mines are closing down the power stations, so our community is male-dominated industry, and our young girls do not know what is out there until programs such as TOI and the University of New South Wales programs actually show them, because our girls have not been, in many cases, outside of Newcastle.
We brought 17 girls down yesterday to Sydney, and they were so excited that there was Starbucks. We had to explain what Starbucks was. Now for everybody in this room, you all know what those things are. For my girls, they don't, because they live in a very small community. Poverty is extreme. Our parents do not believe that their daughters can succeed as a result of history. So, we need these programs to show that there is a future for our girls out there, that they can succeed, and it doesn't matter what their postcode is, that they can make a change.
And this is the prime time with the change in industry, with clean energy coming on, we can work with you, and we want your assistance so that you can show our girls where and how they can achieve in the future.
Annika Freyer:
Thank you so much.
I'm just curious to unpack a little bit more about the different experiences. You spoke about the socioeconomic bearings. How do those specifically manifest for girls? I mean, you touched on it a bit, but what's their experience like that's different?
Simone Hughes:
So, our girls, again, they, you know, when you talk to them about what career prospects, they're still talking about, "Oh, maybe I could be a hairdresser. You know, maybe I could work, you know, at McDonald's."
They actually don't know what other industries are out there. And we are doing lots and lots of work with them. And we run and we are a driving force as a result of these initiatives. We actually now have a STEM program running in our year eight.
It's actually in sport time. I've manipulated the curriculum. I've done a whole lot... It's about thinking differently. It's about how do I do this so that our girls can have this? And one of those programs that we're operating next to me is I'm having those girls on buses every Thursday during sport, they're running to the bus, so I'm ticking a box. That's their sport.
(audience laughing)
They'll run back to the bus, and they'll...and they're out.
They're going to the University of Newcastle, they're going to Ampcontrol. We are engaging with people in the Hunter area to actually take our students out and see what is actually out there for them.
We are bringing people in to be mentors to our school. We actually, again, it's called a mini-elective in year seven, but I'm electing the students and the staff again, to be part of that program, because it's not in the curriculum.
So, it's about how do I change this? How do I manipulate? You know, I'm pulling minutes out of different subjects and I'm creating programs to again, show these girls what is out there.
But we are getting them out there, we're getting them, you know, we're taking them on excursions with, you know, putting them in rooms and looking at, you know, various different information.
But they need to see it hands on. That's the thing. Our kids, they're visual learners. They need to see what it is, they need to touch it, they need to feel it.
So, you know, taking them out to, we have a local airstrip, taking them out there and getting to actually see planes, to be in planes, 'cause most of them have never been on one.
So, all of those little things, getting them to talk to people and the success so that we can start igniting that fire and changing the belief in their head and their parents' belief that no, no, that, you know, being a hairdresser is an acceptable job.
And look, we all need hairdressers. I love my hairdresser. He's one of my best people. I'd never, ever offend him, but I want something different for my girls.
(audience clapping)
Annika Freyer:
I'm just curious as to how your efforts and the programs are being received by parents and the community more broadly.
Is there support?
Simone Hughes:
Absolutely.
Again, we're doing a lot of education with our parents, because that's one of the things.
Again, our parents left school at 14. They left school, they went to drive trucks on the local council, or they've gone to work in the mines. Lots of our mums are stay at home mums, or they might work casually in, you know, an office somewhere.
So we are actually doing a lot of work with our parents, and it was great to see our girls on Anna-Grace's photos, because again, I use my social media with my school every day to get those images out to our community and our broader community so that they can see just what's happening and yeah, and go, "Oh, maybe my daughter can do that." Oh, you know?
And also explaining to our parents that just because, particularly our Aboriginal parents, because it is still an issue within tradition, that just because their child is more educated than them is not going to mean that they are not going to still be part of the family.
So we are trying to break down those barriers to say, yes, we can break the cycle of poverty, we can... You know, and that happens through education, but they will still be your child. They will still love you and you can be exceptionally proud. And again, last year we had a program where we had 100 Aboriginal students start year 12 at term four, and 100 graduate. So you know, of our cohort, 100%. So 23 of our 23 graduated, you know, out of 100 students. So 100% of the students graduated.
We have a graduation wall down in our yarning circle. We bring our families in and we show them, you know, graduations, we show them success. We also then bring those young people back later after they've been to university, and work with our students to show success.
So, it is about educating our parents and again, bring them on board. We talk about it's a team. It's a whole team effort. It's community, it's school and it's families all together. It's the only way it will work.
Annika Freyer:
Thank you so much.
So over back to you, Anna-Grace. You alluded to the program and said you'd speak a bit more about the story.
Please share more.
Anna-Grace Millward:
Yeah, I mean, for me personally, I started my first business at 17, so I've always been an entrepreneur, but I now live in Silicon Valley in San Francisco and my American husband absolutely scoffs at the fact that I never heard about Silicon Valley or startups until I was, you know, I wanna say mid-20s. Like, literally moving into my Masters at university, and it was quite by chance that Sydney University was opening the largest ARVR lab, and I was able to move into a tech Masters instead of going off to pursue something like law in the US.
I think that I am pretty indicative of my generation of a lot of women growing up here in Australia who, and a lot of men, like, we don't have quite the same innovation culture. It's coming on now, but we haven't had as, you know, countries like the US or Tel Aviv. Like, there are some amazing innovation hubs around the world.
And so for me, I felt like it was a mixture of luck that took me into this world of STEM. I never identified as being someone who was interested in STEM, and in fact, now, like, Microsoft are collaborators of ours as well with TOI. And that initial point of connection actually came back through one of my peers who I completed school with, who dropped out, who was the only girl doing computer science in our grade, and who dropped out in year 12 because of that environment and because she was the only girl.
So, I think it's part of that story, but ultimately when I arrived at the Sydney Startup Hub, I thought, "Wow, this is so exciting, like, this is the future of work." You know, there's no cubicles with fluorescent lighting. There's actually pool tables and ping pong tables, and people being creative. But what I didn't see was a lot of women, and what I didn't see was a lot of young people.
I was one of only about seven female founders out of more than 250 startups, and that was an anomaly. That was the real world that I was in. So the opportunity to be able to bring together what was initially just my network, but now has grown to be one of the most powerful ecosystems in Australia in terms of the number of women and executive leaders at such a wide range of companies, I think is really just a signifier that there's a big shift.
It's not just coming, but it's already here.
And that we collectively as a community are working to empower the next generation and to really accelerate them. We can get there much faster with our help and when we all work together.
So, TOI as an initiative is really about forging that collaboration, about being the sticky
glue in the ecosystem. And our, like, scale up process has just been incredible. But to be very truthful, we have a wait list of, like, 50 schools, and it's predominantly schools that are from the most underserved communities where we can have the greatest impact.
It's also schools that require additional funds to be able to come to metropolitan areas to have these hands-on experiential experiences, and the teachers as well, and all of the upskilling that needs to happen in those communities.
So, we're really thankful for these sorts of partnerships and collaborations with, for instance, the Department of Education where we've been working with their STEM Enrichment Team and really being able to see how we can combine these resources to have a greater impact than we would if we were just working on our own.
Annika Freyer:
Yeah, for sure.
Well, you spoke a bit there about scale a bit obviously, but can you - and you've given us an overview of the program, but a little bit of the success metrics and the plan for scaling up?
Anna-Grace Millward:
Yeah, so as I said, TOI is a six-month curriculum. It's actually mapped to the Australian curriculum as well. And so right throughout the program it is, you know, something where we're actually collecting data the entire time and being able to test.
There is assessment built into the program, and part of it is also these real-world outputs, like, the girls actually being able to say - we don't just give a certificate at the end, like, we've got the equivalent of these microcredentials and we were talking about parents, we really do it for the parents. So, you can break down every element of which technical tool they've worked with.
So, like, we do resume building in TOI as well. So, you come out of TOI being able to say, okay, I've done business modelling and impact modelling, and I can actually, I have the technical skill of being able to create a formula in Excel and present that model.
Yesterday they also did UX UI with one of the design leads from Canva, and we were working on Figma, so they're able to then use Figma to actually have the digital tool of bringing their ideas to life.
There's all kinds of technical skills that are baked in to the program where they go home with these, kind of, you know, more than just a piece of paper, but on paper a way to kind of quantify and be able to deliver to others in their network. Whether that's a future employer, or even if they're just applying for a scholarship or a school, what their skill sets actually are.
And then in terms of what we map at the end of the program, a lot of it is on the soft skill side, also just self-reflection. So, the students coming into our program, some of the biggest barriers that they're expressing are things like lack of confidence. It's more nervousness about having to work in a group and to even be able to share their ideas. For some of them, you know, it's basic communication skills, it's eye contact, it's being able to sit across from the table with an incredible mentor from industry and know the difference between asking an open question and a closed question.
And so, they do all kinds of self-reporting throughout the program and 100% of our students report that their communication and confidence has lifted as a result of TOI. That's really what lays the foundation for them to then have an open mind and an appetite to take on these technical challenges, which can be really big challenges and take multiple years for them to kind of master those skill sets or move into spaces, knowledge areas that they're interested in.
But what that looks like for us is primarily subject selection. So ultimately, what did they
choose when they finish? And we also look at what their school's offering, because they are limited by the subject selections that their schools have on offer as well, and we definitely encourage TOI teachers as well to put their hands up to run STEM electives in their schools too, because they then feel more confident as well.
And then it's also about their projections for their future. So, we ask them about what they would like to study in year 11 and 12, and so that's really where we are looking to create some longitudinal data into the EmpowerHER Program so we can pick them up again.
TOI now has been running for four years, so we're actually gonna be able to see where those students are going. So it's a prime time for us to do that.
But I'll just say most programs in the industry right now are looking for large end data sets. They're low tech touch programs with really great reach. That doesn't work in terms of adoption in communities where you need a whole person shift, a whole person change in terms of all of those soft skills and even those life experiences, like, visiting a city for the very first time, like Sydney.
So, TOI is about long-term change and really deep change, and so that's kind of where we focus our energy and also our data and mapping.
Annika Freyer:
And just finally to that, if it's a whole of person change, how do you engage with sort of the community?
Again, almost a similar question around career advisors, teachers for the long term to support those students.
Anna-Grace Millward:
So, this is probably a great opportunity to share something that we have coming up because I feel like there might be a few people in the room here who could even engage and get involved.
So, with Sharon and the Institute, we've been talking about as part of EmpowerHER, you know, it's really going to showcase what the future of work looks like. It's going to give students an idea of what are the skillsets that are needed, and so we'll be targeting not only teachers to attend, but curriculum coordinators and also career advisors.
It's different in every school who those kind of decision makers are. It's not a one-size-fits-all. So we're really opening up the community.
But ahead of launching that program, we're intending on having a webinar in term four, school term four of this year. And that will be really open to all schools to join.
We're going to make it a free offering for all government schools, and that will be encouraging them to come along. And so we're talking to different industry leaders also working with the institute for how we can kind of provide them with some of this information to start to create that knowledge and also the culture in the school, because it's a big culture shift that TOI provides.
Like, we see a lot of these, you know, STEM clubs and extracurricular activities starting as a result of the school participating in TOI. There's a huge flow on effect outside of our program. And so yes, upskilling and providing more information and a closer connection to industry is really important, and that will kind of be the focus of the webinar.
So if anyone here is interested in, like, being involved in potentially speaking to schools about the future of work and what that looks like, whether it's through your specific organisation or, like, you know, we're looking to even maybe get some experts from LinkedIn involved, it should be really fun, and it's also so needed. And that's something very scalable that we can open the doors to schools anywhere, because it will be a webinar and they can hop on and join.
Annika Freyer:
Thanks so much.
I might hand to you, Sandra, now to share a bit about your experience on the challenges and opportunities of engaging girls in STEM, and then also with the angle of that socioeconomic barriers. But maybe from the teacher's side as opposed to the students'.
Sandra Moore:
Yeah, I'm Sandra Moore. I am the Lead in Equity and Partnerships in the Department of Education. I work in the STEM Enrichment Team. I have a background- I started in IT back in the days when we were making things up, which was a fantastic environment. No women, no women. Me, just me. And then moved into science and maths teaching.
So I'm a physics and maths teacher. I have one of my ex-students here, and I've recently moved into the department of Education as a curriculum advisor in the enrichment space. So we are very aware of the issues that are facing, getting young women in. Particularly rural and remote where there's multiple sort of multifaceted barriers that are in place, and we have a comprehensive multifaceted targeting of the top two goals of the plan for public education are to advance equity and participation for students. But the second one is to support and increase the respect for the teaching profession as well, which is really important.
As the STEM Enrichment Team, we do a number of different things. One of probably the big ones in this area is we have what's called Academies of STEM Excellence, which are based in rural and remote areas. And we have STEM Project Officers who work with schools like Simone's school, very successfully to build that capability between industry and the schools. So it's working with the community, the local community, and those Project Officers will do things like facilitate funding for the girls who came yesterday.
It was wonderful to see. They got some funding from the science and engineers...The Offices of Science and Engineer- and to sort of facilitate grants and experiences, but also to tailor that to the local context, which is really important as Simone mentions is that can do, which is about the mentoring, and that long-term pipeline that you don't have to move out of your area to actually build your strengths and to contribute back to your community.
The other thing that we do in our team is we work on curriculum. So we enrich the curriculum
and focus on the STEM area. So I work with my math, science and technology colleagues in their curriculum advisor roles, and we enrich those in a STEM focus. So that might be working across all KLAs to do a little bit of timetable. Sort of, what do we call that? Manipulation enhancement.
Steal a few hours from maths and empower the maths teachers or the science teachers to actually build that understanding of what's going on in the community and to upskill them into the changing job roles as well. And we also have a department-approved elective, ISTEM, which is a fantastic multifaceted program that's in stage five.
Doing something like Orbispace is a wonderful entry in year eight, so that next term that they will say, “Oh, is our school offering ISTEM?" And we provide that, not just the curriculum components but also the support resources for the teachers that deliver that. So that's one of the big areas that we are working on.
The teacher workforce is another big, and that's a challenge. It's a global challenge, and particularly exacerbated by STEM. So STEM teachers, we are rare, I have to say, across the world, but also again rural, regional and remote. So rural, regional and remote STEM teachers, there's just not many out there. So we really look to our tertiary partners both for their initial teacher education, but for ongoing professional learning just to build up that capability and the confidence and the exposure for the teachers as well as the students. So that pipeline is supporting those mentors.
So teacher mentors, a lot of the time their students, the first people that they look for in terms of a model will be their teachers. So and I think that's something that we do, do well. There's just not very many of us at the moment.
Anna-Grace Millward
Can I just quickly add to say as well, so the teachers in TOI, they also do teacher training, and they do all of the workshops with the students, and even when a new curriculum is released in schools, the teachers are having to learn that in real time.
Like, when the STEM curriculum comes out, there's tons of upskilling, real time upskilling that goes on for teachers. It's much the same with TOI, but then they'll be working with tools like using a Miro board or Figma, or they're learning, like, ideation processes that they'll start at then applying not just in our course but across their work in all of their subjects.
We're seeing that, and we've even had teachers, which is particularly important in tiny regional schools who didn't identify as STEM educators, who since doing the program have found that they too love STEM, and have actually either retrained or expanded their training to be able to provide that in their schools, and that's so important when you are under-resourced, is to be able to build those capabilities within the school and to create that culture and that internal school infrastructure.
So that's another big thing that we really work on.
Annika Freyer:
Fantastic. I'll open up to questions.
But before doing so and while you think of your questions, I was keen for some reflections on call to action for industry or how the private sector can and could be working with any of you.
Open to anyone to chime in.
Simone Hughes:
You are all alumni of a school. Get in contact with your school.
Some of you, you know, previous student. Let the school know where you are now, what you have done.
You know, again, my school, I get my previous students to write some blurbs or I write a blurb, and again we put that out there to our school community.
We showcase, this is where our students are now. Again, as parents, I know going to some kindergarten evening or some kindergarten show and tell just drives me insane at the thought of it.
But if we can start again from kindergarten to show our young women what is out there, go and do the talk at your child's school. Go and show them how, you know, kindergarten kids at five years of age start embedding in their brain that they can succeed, and that there's jobs out there that haven't even been thought of, that they can do in the future.
Start putting that in straight away. As I said, kindergarten, preschool...Preschools all have those, you know, Come As a Doctor Day or Come As a Nurse Day. How about we change some of that up? Come as an engineer, you know? Come as a techno electrician, you know? Any of those things. Get that out there to our communities from preschool.
Sandra Moore:
And I would agree. Also, industry partners in the department, we're very happy to have industry partners. Very, very happy. We'd love to have any input, whatever you can offer.
We can help you tailor what you can deliver. It might be even curriculum support. It may be an example of an activity that we can embed in a technology lesson for example. So we are very happy and we'd love to have a couple of minutes, particularly with a diverse group of engineers and technologists that we can have them describing what they do as an intro to a lesson.
So speak to me. We'd love to have some more partnerships with industry.
Anna-Grace Millward:
I guess for us and our program, the most scalable solution would be for us to just target the program at richer metropolitan schools. That's what would really work.
But we're a charity, so what our measure is, is impact, and beyond just our program offering and being able to run the program and mentioning we have, like, this enormous wait list of schools, we subsidise up to 100% of our fees just depending on how much corporate sponsorship we can bring in.
So every year we look at how much money we have, then we rate the schools based on their need, and then that determines ultimately how much subsidy we give. But I'll say that 1/3 of our cohort showed up at the Sydney Startup Hub over the last two days, and we had to get Apple to ship in 100 iPads for us, because 1/3 of our cohort doesn't have a device at home. They don't have a laptop, and a big percentage of them don't have wifi. So, like, these are the material realities.
We had one regional school who actually couldn't come because they didn't receive any funding in time for their travel and they just couldn't afford the flights and accommodation.
So I would say that instead of our focus being on the program delivery, most of our energy goes into trying to find resources for the schools. Like, that is the biggest need that our team has right now. And for every extra dollar, that's another school or another student.
Even with our existing cohort, many of these schools would like to put in 30 students or even their entire grade. We're capping them being, like, you can send five, because we're trying to really selectively build out the diversity of the cohort.
So whether it's scaling up in a particular school where you've planted that seed, you've got those engaged educators. Like, everyone's on board. It would be great if we could grow the initiative there. But even beyond that we have many schools in the wings who are waiting for their turn.
So we'd love your support, and we'd love to work in partnership with the Department of Education as well in being able to expand our corporate relationships.
Annika Freyer:
Thanks so much.
We probably have time for one or two questions.
Oh, already. Over to you.
Audience member 1:
Thanks for taking the time out to speak on the panel.
For context, I've actually been speaking to my high school. I've presented for the past three years to the students talking about careers in engineering. For the past two years we've had a slight uptick in female participation with that for our two female students for every 30 students there.
What advice can you give me to give back to the careers advisor to increase the female participation?
Anna-Grace Millward:
Enrol in TOI.
(audience laughter)
Audience member 1:
Besides that, because the careers advisors, they're very flat out
Anna-Grace Millward:
That's what we do.
Audience member 1:
Anything else, yeah, besides that though?
Anna-Grace Millward:
EmpowerHER.
Sandra Moore:
Yeah, provide information and I'd try and get a female colleague to come with you.
Audience member 1:
I did that this year actually.
Sandra Moore:
Fantastic. That makes a really big difference. So you as an ally and a female colleague is fantastic modeling.
Offer to see if you can actually do any speaking within classrooms.
Yep. Make it easy. We all know that schools and teachers are overloaded workload wise, so make it easy. Come up with a...Try and investigate what the school program is. So, you can hear that Simone's school is really flat out. They have a number of programs already running. If you can find out a little bit about that and then try and plug into existing programs that you can enhance them, that would be fantastic, yep.
Audience member 2:
I went to a small rural school where, you know, 75% of us dropped out in year 10 to do an apprenticeship. But we saw that apprenticeships actually give that, you know, faster career acceleration potentially with what we're up against, you know?
Do you have anything that you're developing for students that go, "University isn't going to be for me," that might actually help, you know, in terms of looking at energy and engineering for the future?
Anna-Grace Millward:
I can just tell you a really quick case study.
I don't think she's here. Megan Cox didn't come. Megan Cox, she's a student that was one of our OG alumni coming out of TOI. She was from a public school in the Sutherland Shire of Sydney. She thought she would go and do a degree at Wollongong University in Arts. She came to the Future for Female Leadership where she was in the mentoring sessions and networking sessions. She actually learned about a technology apprenticeship. She was able to go home, apply. She went on to do that technology apprenticeship at PWC. And as a result of that, she then became New South Wales Apprentice of the Year and then Australian Apprentice of the Year. But she totally just skipped out on the whole Wollongong University degree.
And so when I say we have 100 women in innovation that showed up to the hub in the last two hours, they come from extremely diverse backgrounds. Whether that's pathways in industry, their aspirations, culture, skill sets, intelligence type. The session that we run is if you envisage speed dating, but we call it speed networking. So the girls are having lunch, and they're rotating chairs every 10 minutes. And the reason why we do that is so that they can speak to an enormous cross section of women in industry and understand, like, you know, usually if schools are getting people in, it's like, oh, we have a connection with a parent and fortunately, we're able to get someone in. But that person might not have been the right person for every student in the room. It's also, like, serendipitous, a bit of luck and a bit of privilege who schools can pull in through their networks.
So our goal is really to make this universal ecosystem that is really far reaching and universally available regardless of where students come from, and being really inclusive of all those pathways.
Simone Hughes:
We also push very strongly SBAT, School-Based Traineeships for year 11 and 12. So students undertake two or four units of work in a particular industry whilst they're doing the HSC.
Again, we understand our community's socioeconomic status. So students who are on SBATs, they're doing TAFE, they're working, they're doing HSC all at the same time, and they're getting paid as part of that SBAT.
They then have a RPL. They quite often will pick up an apprenticeship at the end of year 12 in the industry. We tell them that going from school straight into university is not always, you know, gonna happen and it's not always the best pathway for them. But doing that SBAT, getting that experience, we'll quite often see them finish an apprenticeship, get a job and then go, "Actually I now can, I'm now ready to go to university and go and start that university degree." But they have that RPL, they have employment, so they're leaving us, yeah, with money in their pockets with degrees in their, you know, in their hands and a future.
So it's not necessarily a straight line sometimes, you know, it's like driving up the Hunter Expressway. There's a few different, you know, roadblocks and lifts and turns, but it's the end goal and that's it.
School-Based Traineeships for year 11 and 12. And again, employers taking on our students in those School-Based traineeships are really, really important in the industry as well.
Annika Freyer:
Thanks so much. I think that takes us right up to time. So, thank you all for your contributions and your questions. And back over to you, Sharon.
Sharon Swift:
Thank you, Annika for hosting the panel. Thank you.