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Start in Year 11
Not the last term of Year 12. Year 11.
The reason is arithmetic rather than caution. Post-school options have limited places and they fill. Funding conversations require a planning meeting, and planning meetings take time to arrange. If new supports are needed, those providers need capacity, and capacity in February is booked well before February.
Families who start in Year 11 generally have something meaningful in place by the following February. Families who start in October of Year 12 generally don’t, through no fault of their own.
Understand what’s actually available after school
School Leaver Employment Supports, usually shortened to SLES, is designed for participants in their final years of school and immediately afterwards, building the skills needed to move towards work. It’s time-limited and it needs to be in the plan.
Further education through TAFE Queensland or a university, with supports funded to enable participation rather than to provide the education itself.
Open or supported employment, depending on the person and what they want.
Capacity building supports, particularly daily living skills and community participation, which for many young people is the right foundation before anything vocational makes sense.
And for some, a period that’s deliberately about building independence and social connection rather than about work. That’s a legitimate goal and it’s worth saying so at the planning meeting rather than defaulting to employment language because it sounds better.
The conversation to have at the planning meeting
Come with a picture of what a good week looks like after school, not a list of programs. Programs change and fill up. A description of the week gives a planner something to fund against.
Name the transition explicitly. Assist life stages, transition and support exists precisely for this, and it frequently isn’t in a plan simply because nobody mentioned that a transition was coming.
Be specific about what school was providing that will now stop. Structure, transport, supervision, therapy delivered on site, social contact. Schools do far more than education, and none of it is automatically replaced.
Assist life stages, transition and support →The things families consistently underestimate
Transport. School buses stop. If a young person can’t travel independently and the family was relying on school transport, that’s a new daily problem from day one.
The social loss. Leaving school means leaving the people who were there every day. Plenty of school leavers go from constant contact with peers to almost none, within a fortnight. That isn’t a minor adjustment and it’s the part most likely to be missed while everyone focuses on logistics.
The load on parents. When the structured day disappears, someone absorbs it, and that someone is usually a parent who may also be working. This is a common point at which a family’s whole arrangement quietly becomes unsustainable.
And the young person’s own view of it. Not everyone wants to move straight into employment supports because that’s what the pathway suggests. Asking properly is worth more than assuming.
A rough timeline that works
Queensland timing has its own quirks. The school year finishes in late November or early December, TAFE Queensland enrolments for semester one open well before that, and the January period is when almost every service is running short-staffed. A February start date that looks comfortable in October can be very tight by the time the holidays are over.
During Year 11, start the conversation with the school and the support coordinator. Look at what exists locally. Visit places. Get a sense of what appeals.
Early in Year 12, get the transition into the plan, either at a scheduled reassessment or by requesting one. This is the step that has the longest lead time and the least flexibility.
Mid Year 12, confirm arrangements and secure places. Start building any independent travel skills now rather than in January.
Term four, have the week after school mapped out, including transport and who is doing what. Not a vague intention, an actual schedule.
January, do a trial run of the new routine while the pressure is low. It’s much easier to fix something in January than in the second week of February.
