0:03 Evans River is kindergarten to Year 12 school on the final North Coast of NSW. Vocational education is a priority for us at this school. We focus on making sure the curriculum is engaging for the students. That is the fundamental.

0:19 The Green Team is the Year 9 vocational education programme that runs parallel to our mainstream curriculum which are all trade orientated. In Green Team we've learned like life skills, how to build stuff, landscaping, gardening, construction to get to go outside work with our hands. We've built tables, we've worked out on a Bush track and built an outdoor classroom

0:44 with the track nulling out your room. I think it makes us all proud, showcases the skills that these guys have got. It gives kids an appreciation of where they come from, a sense of place.

0:56 We gotta put it just in the middle. The green team really has been enormously powerful in engaging students in school. The green team solves problems of attendance. If the kids aren't coming to school, they can't be in the green team. Mate, you haven't every Tuesday off. I can't take you on Friday if you if you're not turning up at school. And it was something I was looking forward to every single week. That was definitely a big motivator for me to be good in class. It's really important to have parallel curriculum to be able to develop those skills and to also show students how valuable they are. I've got kids

1:30 would have been part of green team that had just gun workers now and I look at that transition from when they started to now and how ready they are to be in the workforce.

1:42 Green team taught me some skills that now I can pass on to fellow apprentices that are going to be working under me. Essentially now I'm giving back to the community by helping other kids. I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't start my apprenticeship when I did back then cause the grade team because like there's no way I was going to make you 12. Yep. It's about building stuff and the outcomes and the skills that we learned and the great projects that we do, but it's also the relationships that we build and turning these young boys into fine young men. You get comments all the time. I've heard I've seen your young fella out doing this all. They're good.

2:16 It's I think it's a great thing to have. I certainly would encourage other schools to develop their own parallel curriculum. We have the Green team, which has been a very successful pathway for our students. There's so many things you could do within your school to engage a small group of disengaged kids. It's magic. It is absolutely magic. Do a green team. It's amazing.