Box Hill High School

Location: Eastern suburbs, Melbourne

Box Hill HS, an established multicultural co-educational secondary school in suburban Melbourne, has an enrolment of about 1,230 students. 825 students are English-speaking, and 450 speak, in total, more than 53 languages other than English. Around 100 students have been identified and/or diagnosed with disabilities, but few of them receive additional funding.

How Box Hill High School has used Gonski funding

Across 2016-2017 Box Hill HS will receive about $117,000 in Gonski funding, which has mostly been allocated to support the large number of unfunded students with disabilities, with some funding used to continue a social worker position in the school.

Maintaining the social worker position has ensured that student or parents can continue to receive support or referral to additional services such as psychologists, social workers, youth workers and speech pathologists who are available for student appointments at the school within school hours. Gonski money also helps to pay for 3+ integration aides to support students with disabilities.

How Gonski funding has made a difference for students

Box Hill HS is a high-achieving school, and Principal Kate Mitchell believes the school’s ethos and commitment to funding student well-being and engagement services is central to maintaining its high achievement levels.

What the continuation of Gonski funding means for Box Hill High School

Gonski funding at BHHS has already made a difference by providing extra support to individual students and supporting the provision of welfare services and learning specialists. Additional needs-based funding would allow BHHS to embed and extend major new initiatives, allow the school to extend support programs such as “immersion” classes for Students with English as an Additional Language (EAL), introduce programs to enhance the literacy & numeracy skills of it students, and continue its support for students with disabilities.