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A hugely successful partnership between UWA and Shenton College has been recognised with a $30,000 grant to continue the 15-year-old Learning Links program.

NAB Schools First Fellowship rewards outstanding school-community partnerships that deliver improved educational outcomes.

Learning Links delivers even more: as well as enriching, encouraging and supporting the school students, the program provides UWA academics with participants, data and material for research projects; professional development for the high school teachers; work experience at UWA for the students; and practicum placements at Shenton College for education students.

The collaboration began in 1999 with Hollywood Senior High School and continued when the school was transformed into Shenton College in 2001.

It brings together students, teachers and academics in almost every discipline from sport to language, from music to science, from art to agriculture.

Over the past couple of years it has resulted in gold medals for the College in local rowing and international science competitions.

Last year, a recruitment program by the UWA Rowing Club saw 25 Shenton students take up a new sport and train over the summer holidays. More than 60 students took part in this year's Head of the River All Schools event, winning a gold, seven silver and four bronze medals.

The flagship science program in Learning Links is the Beijing Youth Science Creation Competition.  Bright science students are chosen to be paired with and mentored by UWA science researchers and they work together on projects which the students present in Beijing.

In 2012, three Shenton students won gold medals.  The same three students were all finalists in another international science quest, the BioGENEius competition. Their research work with Dr Natasha Teakle (Agriculture), A/Professor Julian Swaine (Surgery), and Winthrop Professor Karam Singh (Agriculture) was published in respected journals.

This year, UWA scientists again mentored Shenton students.  No gold medals this year, but the students received an exceptional start to a career in science.

A combined science and mathematics project had students working with leading researchers on muscular dystrophy gene research, software programming to investigate free body movement in space, asthma research and gene identification in lupins.

Humanities students are also supported in the Learning Links program. This year A/Professor Ethan Blue and Dr Sophie Sunderland from the Arts Faculty and Antony Gray from StudySmarter (Student Services) ran a critical thinking seminar before the start of the school year.

More than 60 year 11 and 12 students learned to question their reading and thinking processes, to ‘overload' with stronger, faster, better research and to interrogate the views presented in different texts, setting themselves up for a more productive and successful year at school.

Dance and drama programs, swimming and sailing training and WACE revision seminars have all been part of Learning Links over the past few years.

The Schools First Fellowships are sponsored by NAB (National Australia Bank), the Foundation for Young Australians (an independent organisation committed to improving learning outcomes and life chances for young people) and ACER (Australian Council for Educational Research).

Established in 1930, ACER is a private, not-for-profit company with a long history and solid reputation as a provider of reliable support to education policy makers and professional practitioners.