LAUNCESTON teenager Chris Barrett has come a long way in 11 months.
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Moving from place to place around the North last year with his family, the 18-year-old fell behind at school.
Struggling to see the point in paying attention in class, Mr Barrett would get into trouble, constantly landing himself in detention.
At the start of 2015, Mr Barrett was reading at a year 7 level.
‘‘It was a bit dismal,’’ Mr Barrett said.
‘‘It was kind of annoying and it felt like no one actually wanted to help if they could.’’
Filling out simple Centrelink forms took him hours, but he was ‘‘too stubborn’’ to ask for help.
Friends led him to Mission Australia’s federally funded Skills for Education and Employment program, aimed at improving literacy, numeracy and other basic skills for job seekers.
New migrants with limited English, students with a history of interrupted schooling, and the long-term unemployed all participated in the program.
Mr Barrett said it allowed him to mix with students from different ages and backgrounds.
‘‘We all just work together, which is pretty cool. You don’t [usually] get a mixed group of people, especially with a big age difference working together and being all friendly about it,’’ he said.
Faced with working for the dole, which he saw as ‘‘pointless’’ during program holidays, Mr Barrett decided to act.
‘‘I just went out and applied for, I think it was like, 40-something jobs in a matter of, probably, three months and ended up scoring a job at Hollybank [Treetops Adventure],’’ Mr Barrett said.
‘‘I definitely prefer making my own money rather than it getting paid to me [through Centrelink].’’
The new job had helped Mr Barrett improve his confidence and ability to work with others, he said.
‘‘I’ve definitely improved my social skills,’’ Mr Barrett said.
‘‘I just have to talk to a lot of random people every time I go to work.’’
Learning is not an easy task for many young Tasmanians.
More than 55 per cent of 800 Tasmanian participants in Mission Australia’s youth survey reported barriers to their work and study goals after school, with almost 17 per cent of respondents citing their academic achievement as a major issue.
Mission Australia state director Noel Mundy said the SEE program allowed participants to learn vital skills and improve their job prospects.
‘‘We work with those young people to improve their literacy and numeracy because it is very very difficult in Tasmania to get a job unless you improve your literacy and numeracy skills.
‘‘We don’t have those low skilled manufacturing, food processing jobs where other states may get by in some cases.’’
After studying in the SEE program for around 400 hours, Mr Barrett said he had had a complete turnaround in his learning.
He could now ‘‘read a Lord of the Rings book’’ if he wanted to, and his skills in literacy had overtaken his skills in maths, which used to be his strongest area.
Most importantly for Mr Barrett, he felt confident in his own academic abilities and his intelligence.
He said although his SEE teacher was an important part of the class, he had taken control of his own learning.
‘‘Even though Margaret is our teacher, I wouldn’t say she’s the one that teaches us the most,’’ he said.
‘‘She teaches us how to teach ourselves.’’