A new approach to educational disadvantage

June McLoughlin, Director of Family and Children’s Services at Doveton College, delivered a speech at the Global Access Partners Annual Growth Summit on Education on Friday 19 September 2014. She says that to better engage families, schools needs to fundamentally change the way they interact with young people, parents and the broader community.

What we know

In Australia, a significant proportion of children, especially those from disadvantaged communities, arrive at school developmentally vulnerable. The 2012 AEDI results nationally show 1:5 children are not well prepared to engage in formal schooling. How well children transition to school is important as it can impact on their long term development.

School readiness does not reside solely in the child, but reflects the environments in which children find themselves – their families, early childhood settings, schools, neighborhoods, and communities.

Children’s outcomes are directly related to the educational levels of their parents, especially mothers.

We also know that…

There are many barriers facing vulnerable children when they start school. These include poor health, poverty, lack of positive parenting, disability, family violence, unemployment and child protection issues.

These barriers can be overcome by:

• Children participating regularly in high quality early education programs from two years of age
• Ensuring that all children experience a rich home learning environment
• Engaging parents as partners in their children’s learning
• Providing education and support programs for adults alongside those for children
• Integrating education, community and health services

How do we put this in place?

We need a comprehensive ongoing process by which school and community resources are restructured and woven together to address barriers to learning and development.

Specifically, we need to

• Strengthen the capacity of the existing service system for young children and families – using schools as the base where possible.
• Improve the integration of education, health and community services within schools at a local level.
• Support the development of systems that encourage greater flexibility of service provision and focus on outcomes.

It has become increasingly apparent that there is a need to reconfigure education and support services that are provided in order to achieve better outcomes for young children, families and society in general.

We argue that to better engage families, the institution we know as ‘the school’ needs to fundamentally change the way it interacts with young people, parents and the broader community.

The role of ‘the school’ must become that of helping children to navigate their way through a range of learning resources and problem solving tasks, to identify and develop their competencies across a variety of areas and to develop an attitude to learning that is active and ongoing throughout life.

As stated by Don Edgar in the Patchwork Nation, “‘the school’ must become more of a community learning centre than a place separating children from the world of adults and the wider community.”

One example of this way of working is Doveton College. A place-based approach to supporting the health, development and learning for all children and their families utilising the universal platform of a school.

In 2009 a partnership commenced between the state government’s Department of Education and Early Childhood Development and a philanthropic Foundation.

The Colman Foundation signed a MOU with the state government and committed to becoming directly involved in the education of children in an area with a high migrant and refugee population. Three local primary schools and a secondary school closed and a new school was built on one of the existing sites.

The new College opened in January 2012 and operates as a community focused school catering for families and children, prenatal to Year 9 in a purpose built learning facility.

In addition to the traditional school programs the College, in partnership with many local agencies, offers fully integrated wrap-around services including:

• early years education programs for children from birth to 5
• playgroups
• parenting programs
• child health services
• immunisation programs
• family support
• mental health programs
• refugee health support
• men’s programs
• sewing and cooking groups
• pre-employment programs
• access to adult education
• a range of additional services for adults, including volunteering opportunities and referral to other appropriate services and programs.

The postcode 3177 encompasses Doveton and Eumemmering and, with a SEIFA score of 846, is in the lowest quintile compared to all other Australian communities. Population mobility is high with refugee settlements increasing daily and over 48 different languages spoken.

Specific Doveton community issues include: poor health and wellbeing, high child protection notifications, drug, alcohol, family violence, and mental health issues, intergenerational poverty, unemployment, low education attainment, poor English language skills and high disability and developmental delay.

AEDI results

• 30% developmentally vulnerable on two or more domains when they start school (10% nationally)

NAPLAN results

• 58% of year 3 and 70% of year 5’s are below the expected level in reading compared to the state average 4% of year 3 and 5% of year fives

While other regeneration projects have had the broad agenda of raising educational standards in low performing and socially vulnerable areas, this project is the first to specifically target a particular community with the aim of drastically boosting educational standards and whole of life opportunities for families and children.

This is achieved through the provision of quality early childhood and early intervention, family support, quality schooling and community integration.

While it is early days, one of the most obvious outcomes that has been achieved over the past two years is the increased self-confidence and sense of community that has emerged, with many parents now regularly meeting at the College, participating in their children’s learning and, at the same time engaging in programs aimed at improving their own health and educational levels.

The College is becoming a location for pulling together and integrating services and supporting  ongoing development as well as a site for the implementation of new and innovative ideas and service responses. We aim to develop an environment of success, mutual respect and collaboration between parents, families and school staff as well as members of the wider community.

A detailed evaluation framework specifying outcomes and indicators has been developed and 2013 base line data established for the project. Annual reporting against the indicators will enable tracking of achievements across a wide range of items including children’s academic performance, adult participation in education and other programs and community engagement.

Further details are available from the Doveton College website.

0 Comments

1. 

   Allan Catlin

   September 26, 2014 at 4:43 am

   Overcoming educational disadvantage

   I am very pleased to see a modern approach using tried and true methods to overcome educational disadvantage. Small schools in rural areas in the past were centres of the community, not by design but by necessity. School Councils, as then called, often included 90 to 100 percent of parents with children at the school. Parent fundraising groups were either a sub-group of Councils or included many of the same people. The school building was the local meeting place for anything from church services to sporting and community clubs events. It meant parents were engaged and interested in their children's education. They met at the school often, creating a close knit social group that cared for its members' health and welfare, helping where they could. The parent groups conducted sewing, craft, cooking, table tennis, indoor bowls, etc, and Adult Education Classes were also sometimes held there. None of this was specifically organised or funded by the Education Department at that time. So to me, Doveton sounds like a dream come true, that such things are now being achieved in larger communities with specific planning and funding. Many parents shirk their responsibilities in populated areas by hiding in the crowd. The Doveton model is to be commended highly to all governments as a way to achieve educational and social equality.