Twenty Years in the Making: SPTC Tells Its Own Story
Twenty years after opening its doors with just 108 students, five trade programmes and temporary facilities in Davoren Park, St Patrick’s Technical College has told its story in full. Last week, founders, alumni, staff, students and friends of the College gathered to premiere From Vision to Opportunity, a documentary capturing the journey from what founding Principal Rob Thomas recalls as a place where “there was nothing here once” to one of South Australia’s most distinctive vocational education institutions.
From Vision to Opportunity, SPTC’s history documentary, premiered last week before founders, alumni, staff, students and friends of the College, tracing its journey from a bold idea to one of South Australia’s most distinctive vocational education institutions.
The idea began, as founding Board Chair John Ats recalls, with a simple observation: “There are bright people, intelligent people, who don’t want to go to university, and really there’s nothing else.” What followed was a coalition of industry leaders, the Northern Adelaide Industry Group, and the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide, working under a federal initiative championed by then Prime Minister John Howard to establish a network of technical colleges addressing the national skills shortage. The politics were fierce. The opposition was real. They persisted anyway.
For founding Board Member Jim Montgomery, the purpose was always twofold: helping students “deliver SACE” while also finding them “school based apprenticeships,” so they could finish school and start a trade in the same breath.
Change “the scale of what’s grown from that beginning” to “what has grown from those beginnings”.
Thomas, who led the College through its first decade, says has grown from those beginnings still strikes him: “There was nothing here once and now there’s something really substantial and significant and really important, and it’s had such a big impact on people’s lives.” He recalls families telling him simply that going to St Pat’s “changed their whole life.”
That impact is still being written. Today’s students speak with the same conviction as the founders who built the place — about real industry connections, hands-on learning, and a head start their peers heading to university won’t get for years. As founding Business Development Manager Patrick Kelly recalls of the College’s earliest days: “While your mates might be going off to university, you were going to be in the second or third year of your apprenticeship.”
Twenty years on, that vision continues to define SPTC – a College built on opportunity, still delivering on the promise that inspired its founders.
From Vision to Opportunity is now available to watch in full here
Your Future’s Started.
