The Merritt Secondary School (MSS) have proposed changes to their trades program.
In the March 9 meeting of School District 58, MSS Principal, Leroy Slanzi proposed a partnership with NVIT to help fast track students in their trades program.
“We thought that waiting till Grade 12 to start that wasn’t necessary if we had an opportunity to work with NVIT.”
As it stands, students must complete most of their graduation requirements before heading into either the Youth Train In Trades or the Youth Work In Trades.
The Youth Train in Trades will teach the foundational skills and theory to students while the Youth Work in Trades will have them put in a minimum of 900 hours of work experience working with a certified trades person.
Both go towards completing a student’s Red Seal Journeyman Ticket.
“We have more trades classes than we do Biology, Chemistry, and Physics,” said Slanzi. “We’re essentially turning into a majority trades school.”
David Andersen is one of the people in charge of transitions at MSS and he works with NVIT to help kids with their move to post-secondary education.
“This initiative kind of grew out of an already existing partnership with NVIT,” Andersen said. “We’re looking for ways to strengthen ties in those two institutions.”
In order to fast track the trades program, MSS proposed that students at Grade 11 take Youth Train in Trades at NVIT in preparation for Youth Work In Trades which they would take in Grade 12.
“The idea behind that is they are much more employable with a school year worth of experience under their belt rather than asking an employer to hire somebody with no skills,” said Andersen.
While most of these students’ time would be dedicated to trades, MSS proposed that they will have a teacher to teach the students core subjects.
“We need to make sure that our kids are meeting the Ministry requirements,” said Slanzi.
The proposed updates will implement a dual credit system wherein the credits earned from the trades program will go towards both their certification and graduation from MSS.
“We certainly have students, by the end of Grade 10, have indicated and are pretty serious about pursuing a trades path,” said Andersen. “ These are the students we are targeting with this program.”
Youth Work in Trades currently has 6 students in the program while Youth Train in Trades have 15 kids registered. MSS hopes to implement these updates with the program at the start of next school year.
