A state of the art Trade Skill Centre is now in advanced planning for Narrabri High School will be ‘the best in country NSW’ and play a significant role in preparing young people for local employment.
The new Trade Skill Centre, to be opened in first term 2016, will provide the training base for jobs in mining and agricultural industries, and established local metal fabrication and engineering businesses.
The new facility is a big deal for the local community and for future generations entering the workforce
“It will be double the size of our existing metalwork rooms and fitted out with the latest in equipment from design to machining.”
High School principal Mr Rod Jones is enthusiastic about the project and its potential for students and the wider community.
Local trade training, and retention of local workers, has been identified as a priority need by regional industry and agriculture to provide needed job skills and retain qualified employees in the community.
“The new High School Trade Skill Centre will allow students a training pathway which if they choose can take them through to TAFE to achieve higher metals and engineering certificates,” said Mr Jones.
The Narrabri High students will have access to the best school training facilities available in country NSW.
“The skill centre is specifically being developed for metals and engineering vocational education in Year 11 and 12, but we can use the facility for the junior school, years 7 to 10, as a metals and engineering pathway as students come through the school,” Mr Jones said.
“Year 7 and 8 curriculums have mandatory technology components, with farm technology in years 9 and 10, which is very much a metalworks based program, and then we move into the metals and engineering.
“Students will be equipped for future metals and engineering fabrication employment,” said Mr Jones.
“Discussions have indicated that this is what industry is looking for, and is certainly what the mines are looking for.
“The extractive industries’ employment skills needs are very much part of the reason for the new centre’s development, but it is also for the traditional local fabrication industries.”
The Trade Skill Centre will use the existing spaces of the two existing metal works rooms, but a larger open plan configuration will expand on the scope of works which can be undertaken.
The new centre will have a design and planning room, a ‘clean room’, and workspaces for two classes to work at one time in the main practical room.
The area will be completely refurbished and brought up to at a minimum Certificate One metals and engineering studies standard.
“We have had the capability before, but the new centre will be state of the art,” said Mr Jones.
“The design concept we have looks absolutely outstanding.
“The current facilities and the new centre will be just like chalk and cheese - it will be so good,” he said.
School representatives on the project management team, Mr Jones, and industrial arts teacher Mark Hamilton have been meeting regularly with the designers and the Public Works Department to finalise the plans.
The first half of 2015 will see completion of the design phase and construction tender phase and the second half of next year will see the demolition and refit in time for a scheduled opening at the start of term one 2016.
“The project is really progressing quite rapidly” said Mr Jones.