Avon Maitland District school board reports record number of young women in apprenticeships

In a school year that saw a record high 47 students participate in the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program, officials with the local public school board are celebrating another record – and a sign of growing equity in the skilled trades.

Eleven of those student apprentices were young women.

“We have started working with our students at a younger age. We start as early as Grade 6 with our students now,” said Jodi Froud, the Avon Maitland District school board’s Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program (OYAP) recruiter. “We’re doing our FunTech kits. We’re bringing them into the Pathways Innovation Centre, talking about opportunities in skilled trades – what an actual apprenticeship is – and we’ve been doing this for a while.

“To me, this is the point where we’re finally seeing the hard work of the past six, seven years pay off because now those students are entering high school, they’re taking their Grade 9-10 tech (classes), their senior tech (classes), they’re participating in the specialist high skills major program and dual credits and different opportunities that are going to get them some different exposure in whatever pathway they choose.”

For young women specifically, Froud said the early exposure to the skilled trades and opportunities for hands-on experience, coupled with encouragement from teachers, parents and caregivers, has served to break down traditional gender barriers when it comes to working in the skilled trades – a career path in which women are historically underrepresented.

“For females in particular, we’re having these conversations with students in Grade 8, Grade 7, sometimes Grade 6, and they’re nervous to go into a tech class. … Some of them are exposed (to skilled trades) at home, but it’s about being able to say, ‘You can do this. Just give it a try.’ Once they do, a lot of them seem to really enjoy it. That’s kind of that initial first step,” Froud said.

Froud said high school tech teachers are also encouraged to identify students, especially young women, in their classes who seem to have a knock or passion for a given skilled trade so they can help get them into the right programs and classes that could lead to an apprenticeship or other work placement and even a career after graduation. Froud also credited the school board’s local employer partners for creating inclusive workplaces where young women have just as much opportunity to learn on the job as young men.

In addition, the school board’s annual Women in Trades event offers young women and a parent, caregiver or other significant adult in their life a chance to listen to the stories of local women who work in the skilled trades and take inspiration from their successes for their own potential career paths.

“This inspires me as an adult, so I just hope (young women) see this, they feel this and they think, ‘That could be me/’ … There were a handful of students (at a recent Women in Trades event) … who weren’t planning on pursuing a skilled trade … and then they heard from nine female mentors there who … spoke about their experiences. All of a sudden these students are saying, ‘I think I want to go into the trades. I think I’m changing my path.’

“Putting someone in front of them who has done that, who has seen success, has overcome challenges, that’s what students need to see to see themselves there in the future.”

For more information on pathways programming offered by the school board, visit www.amdsb.ca/apps/pages/pathways.

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