“We’re seeing a significant number of young people with diagnosed or acute social and emotional disability in our school and our service. I was a principal in the department schools. I know that it’s really hard to get the resources that you need into schools.
“We have … the allied health services, we have the psych, the school lawyer, the mental health nurse, the family therapeutic engagement officers.”
Students and staff at Hester Hornbrook Academy.
It’s working for 17-year-old Zane Carne, who transferred from a Catholic school where the gay, transgender, autistic and dyslexic student attracted the wrong sort of attention from their peers.
But Zane says they have thrived since enrolling to study a VCE vocational major at Hester Hornbrook. It’s “heaven” compared to their previous school.
“It’s the flexibility of assignments and tasks and how it’s very person-centred, rather than trying to fit every person into this box of quote successful, unquote,” Zane says.
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“They definitely have more time here for individual conversations and building personal relationships.”
The SAS funding model is also a little different to that of the mainstream system. The special assistance schools are classified as independent, but do not charge tuition fees with funding provided by state and federal governments and philanthropy.
Lobby group Independent Schools Victoria said the growth in special assistance schools had been dramatic, demonstrating a “growing need for targeted education”.
“Independent special assistance schools play a crucial role in supporting students who otherwise risk falling through the cracks in conventional education,” the group’s chief executive Rachel Holthouse said. “Often these students literally have nowhere else to go.”
Pasi Sahlberg, a professor in educational leadership at Melbourne University, said a general decline in mental health and wellbeing among young people in most developed countries, including Australia, was driving higher rates of disengagement in school.
Professor Pasi Sahlberg, a professor in educational leadership at Melbourne University.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
The academic argues that large and bureaucratic state school systems were slow to adapt to the changing educational environment and that the smaller, more nimble independent special assistance schools were better placed to respond.
“School systems have not been able to change and keep up with the pace of thinking about what type of learning, teaching and learning young people need, they’re sort of chasing the situation,” Sahlberg said.
“That makes it quite easy to understand why we have these numbers and statistics with the special assistance.”
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