Year 10 work experience: finding a placement

Somewhere in Year 10, most Australian students get the chance to spend a week in a real workplace. It's often the first time school says, in effect, "go and see what a job is actually like." Done well, work experience is one of the most useful weeks of the whole year — a low-stakes way to test-drive a field, build a bit of confidence, and come back with something real to talk about. Done passively, it's a week of standing in a corner watching someone else work. The difference starts long before day one, with finding the right placement and getting the paperwork right. This guide is for students (and the parents helping them) on how to do both.

What Year 10 work experience actually is

Work experience is a short, unpaid placement with an employer, arranged through your school, usually lasting about a week. You're there to observe and help with simple tasks, not to be hired. In Victoria it's described as the short-term placement of secondary students with employers, generally in Years 9 or 10; in NSW it's an option "approaching the end of their schooling, from Year 10"; in Queensland you can do up to 30 days across a calendar year.

It's worth knowing what it is not, because the names overlap:

• It's not a part-time job. A job is paid work you apply for and can keep; work experience is a one-off, unpaid placement set up by your school.
• It's not VET in Schools or a structured work placement. Vocational Education and Training (VET) — nationally recognised training you can do while at school — sometimes includes a workplace component called structured workplace learning (SWL), which is tied to a specific qualification. General work experience has no qualification attached; it's purely about exposure.
• It's not a guarantee of anything. It won't get you a job offer or into a course. What it gives you is first-hand information — about an industry, and about yourself — that makes your next decision better informed.

The rules differ in every state

This is the part families most often get wrong: there is no single national rulebook. Each state and territory runs work experience through its own education department, with its own minimum age, length limits, forms and payment rules. Here's the shape of it in the three largest states, each confirmed against the official source.

If you're in Western Australia, South Australia, the Northern Territory, Tasmania or the ACT, the idea is the same — a school-arranged, unpaid placement — but the age rules, length and forms are set by your own state or territory education department. Your careers adviser has the current version, so start there rather than assuming another state's rule applies to you.

How to find a placement

The single biggest myth is that the school hands you a placement. Sometimes it does — but often the best placements are the ones a student finds themselves, in a field they actually care about. Either way, the placement has to be arranged through the school: you can approach an employer yourself, but the school must approve it and the form must be signed before you start. Here's how to go about it.

How a work experience placement gets arranged

1. Get clear on a field (not a job title)

   You don't need to know "the career." A broad direction is enough — "something hands-on," "a hospital or clinic," "a workplace with animals," "an office that does design." Start from curiosity, not certainty.

2. Talk to your careers adviser early

   They know which local employers host students, what your school requires, and the deadlines. Because placements run through the school, this conversation is the real starting line — have it weeks ahead, not days.

3. Make a short list and ask

   Pick a handful of local workplaces and make contact — a short, polite email or phone call, or a parent's or adviser's introduction. Say you're a Year 10 student, the week you're after, and why that workplace interests you. Expect some no's; one yes is all you need.

4. Get the paperwork signed before day one

   Once an employer agrees, your school's work experience form (or the NSW Student Placement Record) must be signed by you, your parent or carer, the employer and the school. This is what makes the placement official — and insured.

5. Confirm the practical details

   Lock in the dates and hours, what to wear, how you'll get there, who you report to, and anything they need to know about you (medical, access or support needs). Turning up prepared is the first impression that counts.

A few things make a yes more likely. Ask early — good hosts fill up, and schools have cut-off dates. Be specific about why — "I'm interested in how a vet clinic runs" lands better than "I need to do a week somewhere." And use the adults around you — a careers adviser's introduction, or a parent who knows someone in the field, is not cheating; it's exactly how workplaces are reached in real life.

The paperwork, pay and insurance — the part students skip

It feels like admin, but the form is the whole safety net. Until it's signed, you have no placement and no cover. In every state the arrangement must be signed off before you walk in — in Victoria it's the work experience arrangement form (signed by the employer, student, parent/carer and principal); in NSW it's the Student Placement Record, signed by the student, host, parent or carer and school.

On pay, the short answer is: don't expect any. Work experience is unpaid because you're there to learn, not to work for a wage. NSW is explicit that the host employer cannot pay you — a payment can void the insurance and indemnity that protect both you and the host. Victoria is the one exception, and it's a small one: employers must pay a token $5 per day to help cover expenses like lunch and travel. That's not a wage; it's a contribution.

$5/dayVictoria's mandatory token payment to a work experience student

On insurance, this is why the form matters so much. When a placement is properly arranged, you're covered through the school system, not as an ordinary casual employee. In Victoria, a work experience student is deemed an employee of the Department of Education for WorkCover (workers' compensation) purposes for the duration of the placement. In Queensland, state school students are covered by the Queensland Government Insurance Fund and WorkCover under the Education (Work Experience) Act 1996. The host employer still has to provide a safe workplace — in Victoria, under the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act — but your cover flows from the signed arrangement. No form, no cover.

During the week: how to get real value

Finding the placement is half the job; the other half is what you do once you're there. You don't need to be impressive — you need to be curious and reliable. A few habits turn a quiet week into one worth talking about:

• Turn up early, every day, and dressed for the place. Reliability is the easiest way to make a good impression, and the one most students underrate.
• Ask questions — real ones. "How did you get into this?" "What's the part of the job people don't expect?" "What would you tell someone my age thinking about this field?" People enjoy answering these, and the answers are the whole point.
• Keep a short daily note. Jot down what you did, what surprised you, and what you liked or didn't. Five minutes on the train home is enough — and it's gold later.
• Say thank you properly at the end. A short email or note to your host is courteous, and it keeps a door open for a reference or a part-time job down the track.

That daily note matters more than it looks. The real value of work experience isn't the week itself — it's being able to say, afterwards, what you learned from it. For how to turn any placement, job or volunteering into something you can actually use in an application or a plan, see our companion guide, How to make work experience, volunteering and part-time jobs count.

What's changed this year

If you're at a Victorian government school, the forms are going digital. The Department of Education now recommends schools use the Work-Based Learning (WBL) App to run the whole process end to end — creating and managing the work experience arrangement form online rather than on paper. It doesn't change the rules (same signatures, same cover), but it can make getting a placement approved faster, so ask your careers adviser whether your school is using it. Wherever you are, confirm this year's dates and forms with your school rather than last year's — the details shift, and the official source always wins.

Turn the week into a next step

A good work experience week leaves you with more than a reference — it leaves you with information about what fits and what doesn't, and a clearer sense of which direction is worth exploring next. The hard part is holding onto that and acting on it. If you'd like a structured way to connect what you discovered to real pathways — the subjects, courses and experiences that follow from it — a Career Action Plan (CAP) walks through it stage by stage, from getting clear on a direction to acting on it. It's a calm way to make the week count for something beyond the week itself.

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Last reviewed 4 October 2026. Education rules vary by state and change — we review our guides regularly. Always confirm specifics with the official source linked above.