NSW Puts Schools At The Centre Of Communities

EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: Struggling schools in regional and remote NSW are volunteering to be part of a bold new experiment which aims to close the educational gap between children from rich and poor families.

Those who take part will be much more than learning institutions, they will become community hubs – and preschool education will be a central feature.

It’s part of a new strategy to radically reform under-performing schools and offer students a greater chance of reaching their potential.

And as Susan Smith reports, it was one school in far-western NSW that inspired this shift in policy.

SUSAN SMITH, REPORTER: In far-western NSW, in the Menindee Lakes country, a bold experiment at the local school is paying off. Menindee Local School is now the model which will be rolled out across NSW, starting with approximately 12 pilot schools who will sign up for the project known as “Connected Communities”. Schools become the hubs in communities, a focus of health, employment and psychological support, with preschool being a major focus.

Today the Menindee School is hosting a unique lunch for the NSW Education Minister, Adrian Piccoli.

ADRIAN PICCOLI, NSW EDUCATION MINISTER: Really a school like Menindee is a real lighthouse for that program but a lighthouse for NSW.

SUSAN SMITH: Why Menindee School is so unique is that it is not just a place of learning from preschool to Year 12. The school, with a very high indigenous population, also boasts a full kitchen, hotel and construction facility.

These art deco train carriages are a hotel and restaurant. Tourists can book to stay in this hotel maintained by the high school students. The work is a lot of fun and they are paid a student wage.

In year nine these student can start a TAFE certified course in cooking or hotel management, so by the time they reach year 12 they are already trained for a decent job and have a TAFE qualification.

Principal Brian Debus says the radical transformation started several years ago, when he and the community devised a plan to revitalise the school and tackle the issue of high unemployment amongst school leavers.

BRIAN DEBUS, PRINCIPAL, MENINDEE SCHOOL: We have statistics which show that 66 per cent of our students have full time employment, or are in full time education, as against an Australian average of 23 per cent.

SUSAN SMITH: To make the parents and students feel at home, Indigenous language tuition has been introduced, and special videos made for the students.

PRESENTER: We have to let the fire die right down so that the hot nikki [phonetic], which is the coals, can burn right down so that we can cook. Our nikki-mano [phonetic].

SUSAN SMITH: But Brian Debus is looking at more radical solutions, including extending the time students attend school.

BRIAN DEBUS: What we want to do is to add another year, a year 13, but during those two years they actually get to go to taste university. So at the end of year 13 they’ve had an opportunity to get better passes in some subjects where they want them, and secondly that they go to university with one full credit of a semester ahead of all the other people entering university.

SUSAN SMITH: Adrian Piccoli says, under the new policy, the community gets to say how the school should be run outside the academic curriculum. The policy is targeting schools with complex issues, such as low attendance rates and poor academic results. Walgett Community School is one of those.

Here, at the local indigenous community of Gingee near Walgett, the NSW Education Minister has come to listen to their concerns about how the town operates. Despite the mammoth effort of the principal and staff, the local school is not performing well academically, and about 20 per cent of the children have severe behavioural issues.

The challenge for the Education Minister is to see if, like Menindee School, Walgett can be revitalised. The Walgett Community School has had 14 principals in the last 20 years.

ADRIAN PICCOLI, NSW EDUCATION MINISTER: These schools are difficult schools and perhaps we haven’t given those principals the kind of support that they’ve needed in order to stay. So complex schools need complex solutions. We can’t do at Walgett what we do on the North Shore of Sydney or in Newcastle.

SUSAN SMITH: One idea is for the school to be open from 7:30am to 10pm at night, and include hip hop dancing and Indigenous languages. And another idea is for homework centres to be set up in the community, so kids have somewhere to go after school.

Another key area is preschool. The latest new neuroscience research show children who have good early educational experiences from the age of three do much better academically throughout their lives, and the severe behavioural issues that can appear in high school could be avoided.

ADRIAN PICCOLI: The earliest that we can get to children the better. They get to kindergarten and some kids can’t speak any language at all in kindergarten. Well, for however long they might be at school they’re on the back foot, and teachers will always be challenged in lifting their standards.

So, we really need to address some of these serious problems before kindergarten. In Menindee they’ve done it very successfully. They’ve got 100 per cent participation. We really need to work on ways to replicate that around the state.

SUSAN SMITH: The NSW Government is about to release a review into preschool education that will recommend a new formula for funding early childhood education.