St Patrick’s Technical College students have been learning from the best recently thanks to the Northern Adelaide P-TECH Australia program.
The College is the first in South Australia to run a P-TECH Australia program for its students. It involves industry directly collaborating with teachers and students on projects and providing mentoring and work experience opportunities.
Century Engineering and the newest Northern Adelaide P-TECH partner DXC Technology have spent time in with students during term three. 
Century Engineering’s John Knop hosted four special welding sessions with students from the Year 11 Metals and Engineering program.
Mr Knop, a Certificate 10 Welding Supervisor, showed students how to do a 6 millimetre fillet weld. Students learnt through trial and error how to set welding marks and produce a quality fillet weld.
Century Engineering’s Business Development Manager Andrew Sinclair said it was important for the students to understand why certain welds failed and others succeeded and how to properly use the machinery.
Meanwhile, students in the College’s Information Technology program received some mentoring from software engineers at DXC Technology.
DXC Technology supported the students ahead of the last round of the Adelaide VEX Robotics competition, which they recently won.
STEM teacher Brad Sheridan said DXC Technology were able to challenge the students with questions about their robots and also shared some general engineering principles.
Northern Adelaide P-TECH Industry Liaison Officer Toni Hartley said the students were excited to welcome both Century Engineering and DXC Technology to their classrooms and learn directly from industry.
“Making strong connections with industry is at the core of the P-TECH Australia program,’’ Ms Hartley said. 
“You could really see the students got a lot out of the visits and all our P-TECH partners should be applauded for the time and care they put into mentoring the next generation of workers.
“To take the time to share their knowledge and skills with young people is good for business, good for industry and a fantastic chance to build up our youth.’’
The Northern Adelaide P-Tech Australia partnership was recently listed as a finalist in the 2018 SA Training Awards for best Industry Collaboration.