The Victorian Government yesterday announced a Cisco-based Network Academies Program to provide Victorian students with skills and opportunities to break into the networking industry.
Run as part of a diploma and certificate course at Box Hill Institute in 1999, the networking course offers successful students an internationally recognised accreditation.
Cisco Australia is injecting $500,000 into the course, with Box Hill Institute to become the National Cisco Academy Training Centre, giving it accreditation to train teachers for other academies. The Box Hill course follows the success of a Cisco pilot program at Bendigo Senior Secondary College.
Alan Stockdale, Victoria's Minister for Information Technology and Multimedia, officially launched the course, saying the initiative supports the government's Victoria21 Multimedia strategy to boost skills development.
"IT is a major growth area which has attracted $2 billion in investment and led to the creation of 10,000 jobs in the past four years," Stockdale said.