Building a brighter future

A young Waikato woman has a blueprint for the future – she wants to help build more homes in New Zealand. 

Brooke Brightwell, 18, is one of a group of students who were part of a successful new collaboration between Fairfield College and the Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec) that has seen great leaps in NCEA achievement rates for Māori and Pasifika students at the school. 

Last year the school doubled its roll-based achievement of NCEA level 2 for Māori and Pasifika learners in year 12 This was a change from 25 percent achievement for Māori in 2013 to 50.8 percent in 2014, and an improvement from 38.5 percent to 73.3 percent for Pasifika.

Brooke achieved NCEA Level 3 and is now at Wintec full-time studying the Level 4 Certificate in Building. 

Having always thought she would end up working as a bartender, Brooke now has a very different vision of what lies ahead. “The future goal for building is to be able to build houses," she says. "To give people a home.” 

Fairfield College principal Richard Crawford says in 2013 the school realised that what they were doing was not working for a group of their students. “There was a gap for some of our students - many of them were disconnecting from mainstream school five days a week. We knew we had to change the curriculum somehow.” 

After exploring various options, they partnered with Wintec to put a new programme in place. 

Wintec’s youth product manager Rachel Bowley says the programme targeted a class of priority learners who were year 11, 12 and 13, with most being Māori or Pasifika students. Brooke, who is Maori, was in that class. She was also the only girl. 

“We put them in the Trades Academy Construction Infrastructure course where they did one day a week at Wintec and four days back at school.” 

The initiative is aligned with the Vocational Pathways framework, developed by industry bodies and the Ministry of Education. Students frame their studies in a way that is relevant to them, with a clear pathway to employment or further training and education. 

Students can earn sector related credits at the Trades Academy, which means they are learning skills relevant to a particular industry, which better prepares them for future employment. In Brooke’s case, this would be, construction or infrastructure.

Brooke says with this new way of learning, her studies now made sense. 

“It was a new location, a different experience, and just seemed better. It felt like you’d actually get somewhere doing the work instead of just being at school.” 

And “get somewhere” she did. Brooke is now studying full time at Wintec in an intensive course through Wintec's Māori and Pasifika Trades Training programme, where the students work full days – one week at Wintec alternated with one week work experience. 

“The idea is to get people work ready,” Rachel says. “The whole goal of the programme is that they will transition out to work, in some cases with an employer they’ve been working with throughout the course.” 

It’s hard work, but Brooke is enjoying her studies. 

“The projects we do are very cool. We built a playhouse and gave it to the Kohanga. We also made kids picnic tables.” 

Richard says Brooke is a good example of a student who may have felt disconnected with learning until they found a relevant pathway, but there were many other success stories too. 

“For many of those young people this has been a real turning point in their lives,” he says. “For some of our students the success that they experience [in the programme], keeps them in the game of education.” 

Family members have noticed improvements in the students too. They say the curriculum changes provided direction, made the students more motivated, and gave them an idea of what their future career path could look like. 

Rachel says some of the students came from communities where educational success wasn’t necessarily role- modelled. 

“One of the things that really worked for the students was the sense of identity that being in that group gave them.” 

After the success in this first year, the college is now expanding the programme for future years.