Our History

The Inventorium was developed in response to the shocking statistic in 2016 that between 25% and 40% of kids who start year 8 do not complete year 12!  The statistic varies from State to State and how the counting is done, but on average, 1 in 4 teenagers are not completing high school in Australia.  Not only is this devastating for the future of the Australian economy, but is a tragedy for the young people who are disengaging.  This sparked a deep dive into the research on student disengagement by the Founder of the company.

Research into school disengagement shows there are 3 key reasons students disengage from school:

1.  The pace of the lessons wrong for them (too fast or too slow)

2.  The are not interested in what they are learning - they fail to see the relevance.

3.  Nobody knows who they are - they have multiple teachers for multiple subjects and nobody has a holistic overview of them as a student.

There is a plethora of research and publications on how the education is failing to meet 21st century needs - contact us if you would like a reading list!

The Inventorium is designed by a group of academics, teachers and corporate professionals to embody a major shift in the way we think about and delivery education, and address the root causes of disengagement in the curriculum design.  As a result it has bridged the gap between disengagement and employability, and then it was mapped back to SACE as a high school outcome.  To address the issue of one teacher delivering every subject, and making it relevant to each individual student, we utilised technology to enhance delivery and become 100% accessible online.

Our team were early adopters in the online learning space so we had years of mistakes to draw on.  From streaming to the classroom, to streamining from the classroom, we had done it all.  We drew on all our lessons learned and a broad base of published research, and even then we had lots of learning as we piloted the Inventorium, and we continue to learn every day.  The Covid online learning experience that many experienced in 2020/21 is not what we are about.  We are about personalised, one to one learning, and we have a retention rate around 95% with students who would otherwise not be attending school

Our first partnership was with Open Access College in South Australia and this continues to be our largest provider relationship, covering South Australia and the Northern Territory.  

Students enrol on to our program through Open Access College as a 'special program' and we work with the students to complete their SACE.

We also have arrangements with other schools, which have developed over time, but the one thing we learnt was that in these partnerships, we need to do the teaching.  It is too different a teaching approach for teachers to be able to deliver this alongside mainstream teaching.

When our first attempt at integrating the Inventorium into mainstream schools failed, we learned that the model is too different to teach alongside mainstream provisions and required teachers to focus solely on teaching this way.  We now have a team of 15 teachers and we grow every year.  As more students join us we can offer teachers part-time and flexible working conditions which can meet their needs as well as our students.  

All our teachers are registered with the South Australian Teacher Registrations Board and those teaching in the RTO also have their TAE40116 so they are qualified to conduct VET assessments.