New youth campus offers alternative to high school for teens

A Manukau youth campus aimed at helping teenagers who are not currently engaged in education officially opened on 18th June, to mark the beginning of a new era in youth education under the government’s Youth Guarantee policy.

BEST Pacific Institute of Education has been awarded 190 of the 810 Youth Guarantee places available for Auckland, with 120 of these allocated to the new BEST Manukau campus.

BEST director Anita Finnigan said the Youth Guarantee initiative announced by National in 2009 gives 16 and 17-year-old youths who are not progressing within a traditional secondary school framework the chance to focus on vocational courses in a tertiary environment.

“BEST has over 20 years experience in supporting the passion for learning in Pacific peoples, and now under the Youth Guarantee scheme, we will have the opportunity to nurture youth with their promise of future potential through to higher tertiary education, and enable them to reach for the career opportunities they dream about,” Ms Finnigan said.

“We are confident that once our young people have been reintroduced to learning in a way that best suits their needs, they will succeed in the workplace and go on to further higher learning that supports their career aspirations,” she said.

Currently, 114 out of the 120 Youth Guarantees places have been filled at the BEST Manukau Youth Campus since the programme opened at the beginning of semester one in January this year.

The BEST Youth Guarantee programme has been extremely well-received by secondary schools in Manukau as an alternative tertiary pathway for students who have decided not to finish schooling.

Several schools have approached BEST to take more students for the second semester, and as a result the Manukau Youth Campus will now be offering a mid-year intake for semester two, 2010.