Education & Training

For all St Patrick's Technical College students, the focus throughout their time here will be on developing skills that make them attractive to employers. The skills to which I refer are those associated with workplace literacy, numeracy, trade hand and tool skills as well as employability skills.

The DEEWR Employability Skills for the Future website highlights a range of ‘employability’ skills which are important to gain a job, as well as how to progress within an organisation. Employers consider employability skills to be just as important as job-specific or technical skills. Employers will seek candidates that demonstrate those employability skills that are most important to their business and hence they will choose workers who are strong in these areas.

There are two facets to employability skills: ‘generic’ skills and ‘personal’ attributes such as loyalty, enthusiasm, motivation and a sense of humour.

The key generic skills identified, and how they contribute to the enterprise, are:

• Communication - productive and harmonious relations between employees and customers;
• Teamwork - productive working relationships and outcomes;
• Problem-solving - productive enterprise outcomes;
• Initiative / enterprise - innovative ideas and outcomes;
• Planning and organisation - long-term and short-term strategic planning for the enterprise;
• Self-management - employee satisfaction and growth;
• Learning - improvement and expansion in employee and company operations and outcomes; and
• Technology - more effective work practices.

Every activity students undertake that is associated with St Patrick's Technical College focuses on the development of these skills.

For more information go to: http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/training_skills/publications_resources/other_publications/