Whanganui Star Courses at UCOL Polytechnic

Some students face important decisions about their career choices.  Adding to the confusion is the number of options available to them, while pressure is also on the schools to offer adequate resources to provide students with direction toward further education or employment.

Whanganui UCOL provides the Secondary Tertiary Alignment Resource (STAR) programmes. 

STAR was designed as an opportunity for year 11 to 13 students to explore their potential and help give direction to their further education or employment.  At this age, students may not know which direction they would like to take and a wide range of STAR programmes are available to enable students to “give it a go”, in a different learning environment. In this way students can quite often find a passion for a career or trade.  Many of Whanganui UCOL STAR students discover new talents and skills and a vast majority of these young people become students on Whanganui UCOL’s full-time programmes.

STAR programmes are also a good way of reducing the risk of students leaving school at an early age, particularly those students who are not academically focused.   

All programmes are run by passionate qualified tertiary educators, so not only do students have the opportunity to discover their interests and potential which will help them choose their career path, they also get to ‘have a taste’ of what tertiary education is like.  It is all about allowing students to gradually step into the adult world without fear of the unknown.

For further information on the STAR programmes that Whanganui UCOL provides, give Debbie Smith a call on 06 965 3801 extn 60880 or email D.L.Smith@ucol.ac.nz