Mary Cusnahan Moving beyond the Mayer Key Competencies Based in Broadmeadows - challenged cohort, early school leavers, non-attenders, non-achievers, generational unemployment. Teaches cabinetry at Kangan Batman, apprentices and pre-apprenticeship programs, VCAL learners. Lower value trade as it is not a registered/ licenced trade. As such, cohort's completion rate at school are declining, in competition with other trades. Starting to get more 15-16 year old with lower completion levels. Teachers were grumbling more, we'll try but ... Mary was shocked by that as learners were taking the brave step of giving formal education another go. So we then have a responsibility to make that second chance work. Needed an acknowledgement that This Is Our Cohort. Looked at linking VCAL program to cabinet making. Got a group of 12 students together. Goal was for them to be in a better position to make informed choices about what to do next, and for them to get a piece of paper (meaningful). Set it up as a business model, had a structure with people acting in positions, Understanding that learning doesn't have to be chalk and talk. Had business meetings, real customers, production schedules etc. Wanted to build learner's self-esteem. Teachers were working on the shop floor, foreman was one of the learners. If foreman can't sort it out, then foreman goes to the teacher for support. Maths etc built in to the program daily work - not separated out, eg time and motion studies, quality control, cost of materials and consumables eg sandpaper @ $1-2 a sheet. Work Placement component to VCAL/ pre apprenticeship programs: learner are coming back and telling what the workplaces are doing wrong :) So they truly know this stuff. Masters research to look at what was actually happening. Could see employability skills / Mayer key competencies simply weren't being talked about by practitioners. A lot of the literature was saying that the key competencies weren't clear, nor was there systematic PD in the key competencies. Did interviews with teachers (good, keen, commited ones) and some simply didn't know what they were or didn't focus on them or thought they weren't qualified to teach 'this stuff'. This included teachers who had recently gone through the Cert IV on TAA. Even the Cert IV TAA teachers were even a bit sketchy in their knowledge of and teaching of the Mayer key competencies. Believes there should be a national approach to PD about employability skills, they should be something that underpin units, rather than an add-on. Also suggests that there should be continuing professional development to validate/ maintain currency in Cert IV in TAA. Also to get work placement spots, we offers to send prevoc stdents out to workplace when apprentices come in to TAFE