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17 AUGUST, 2022
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Play on it again, kids The kids at Cambridge Primary School have a new playground to run, slide and climb on. Acting principal Jane Budd said the school had a focus on student wellbeing and the bright colours used on the playground combined with the enjoyment of having a new area was thrilling for pupils. “Since the school has been opened there hasn’t been a new playground so the kids are super excited,“ she said. Ms Budd said it was important for the kids to have a sense of responsibility over their new play area. “Because the students were part of picking aspects of the new playground, I think that’s made it more exciting for them, there were different designs and they got to vote on particular designs,” she said. “We have junior school council leaders being part of the monitoring of making sure that everyone is using the equipment properly, it gave them some ownership.”
Pupils Heidi, James and Alyxa enjoying their new playground. (Damjan Janevski) 293797_01
Skill shortage challenge By Matthew Sims More than a third of employers in the western suburbs of Melbourne have indicated that they are lagging behind in terms of required skills, with another third expecting a skills shortage within the next year, according to a new Victoria University [VU] report. The Centre for International Research on Education Systems at the Mitchell Institute has released a report showing that close to half of the workers of Melbourne’s west must
leave the west for work, while local employers have said they have been unable to find local staff with the right skills. Altona North-based business Australian Website Services has has built about 800 websites for small and medium-sized businesses including local cafes, tradies and community services, with most of its clients based in Melbourne’s west. Australian Website Services digital director Stephen Los said he has found it hard to find locals with the required skills. “I would absolutely love to hire locally since
98 per cent of our customers are in the west, and it makes sense to have staff who live here and understand the region,” he said. Mr Los said there has been discrepancies between job needs and available skills within the west for a number of years. “The digital skills training that high school students are taught in 2022 is almost the same as the old ‘multimedia’ classes I did 20 years ago,” he said. “It gets better at university, but kids are not being properly prepared.”
VU research officer Dr Melissa Tham said their evidence-based approach to boost the number of jobs in the west would be to add on to existing infrastructure. “We’re not suggesting that we have to completely reinvent the west or anything like that,” she said. “Within the context of the west of Melbourne, we’ve got these unique challenges but because we have this increased boost in the population, there’s also a huge opportunity there.”