Vocational Pathways
In addition to the school-based subjects offered at Whanganui Collegiate School, students have the opportunity to consider courses run through external providers and to gain work experience in their chosen career path. This option is available for year 12 and 13 students. All courses are offered with additional funding made available as we are an integrated school, there are no additional course costs except personal gear and take home materials.
Selection for these courses will be at the discretion of the Deputy Headmaster.
Level 2 AG Challenge
A practical agriculture course with unit standards aligned to the agriculture vocational pathway. Students are picked up from the school gates (normally Tuesdays) at 8:40am to go to their course at the AgChallenge agriculture campus and arrive back at 3pm. The course is aimed at students looking to pursue an agricultural pathway covering topics of fencing, farm vehicles, handling livestock and safe work practices. As students are offsite for a day, it counts for one of their subjects and they are expected to catch up with missed work from their other subjects in a study period timetabled at school.
Level 3 Primary ITO Agriculture
A practical agriculture course run by Primary ITO leading to a farming vocation with unit standards aligned to the agriculture vocational pathway where students work on farm for a full day per week (8:40am to 3pm) usually on a Tuesday. Topics covered are fencing, handling livestock, wellbeing and supplying water. Students graduating from this course normally go to work on a farm or continue studying at a farm school or Agriculture at University.
Level 2-3 Gateway
Gateway requires students to work in industry whilst at school, normally one day per week. This is unpaid, as the workplace will assist in training practical skills whilst on site. Students are expected to gain 20 credits through GATEWAY/STAR courses aligned to their workplace during the year. Students completing GATEWAY are often accepted into an apprenticeship/job through their employer or employer contacts at the end of the course. Students are required to organise transport to their workplace.
Level 2-3 UCOL (Te Pukenga) - USkills
USkills offers the ability to study a tertiary course while still at school. Students are offsite for one day per week studying through UCOL (Te Pukenga) in an area of interest. Effectively they are UCOL students for that day of the week. There are a range of courses offered at UCOL both in Whanganui and students are picked up from school and dropped off if they take a course in Palmerston North. For a full list of options see the following link. https://www.ucol.ac.nz/Publications/UCOL%20USkills%20Prospectus.pdf
