Sanctuary Point Public School

Location: Sanctuary Point Public School is located on the shores of St Georges Basin about 200 kilometres south of Sydney.

The school has more than 520 students, most of whom are from low-SES backgrounds, with 85 per cent of the school’s students in the lowest two SES quartiles, and 59 per cent in the lowest. There are about 100 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and around 40 students in special needs support classes.


How Sanctuary Point Public School has used Gonski funding

The school used its additional funding to address significant challenges around student attendance, engagement, aspiration and resilience, which was impeding student performance. For example, the school’s research shows that a substantial number of students who are underachieving academically, have attendance rates below 90 per cent.

The school began by establishing several innovative programs to foster student wellbeing and community engagement including a breakfast program and the ‘Sanctuary Point Dollars’ scheme. Under the scheme families are assisted with educational costs such as uniforms, lunches and excursions. For every hour a parent volunteers in the school – listening to students read, working in the garden, the canteen or the library – they receive five Sanctuary Point dollars towards these costs. A full-time family support employee was employed to work with individual families, staff and community organisations.


How Gonski funding has made a difference for students

Gonski funding has led to a major growth of parent and community engagement with the school. Principal Jeff Ward says that seven years ago, before the National Partnerships and Gonski needs-based funding, the low-SES Sanctuary Point community could have been characterised as a ‘heads down, hoodies up’ community but now the surge in pride in the school and the community through the school’s investment in ‘whole of community’ initiatives has led to it becoming ‘hoodies off, heads up’.


What the continuation of Gonski funding means to Sanctuary Point Public School

Student attainment at Sanctuary Point Public School, has improved and school attendance rates are now close to the NSW state average, however the process of attacking complex, entrenched problems such as parent-condoned absenteeism amongst some families remains a problem and can only be improved with ongoing Gonski funding.

<<< BACK


More Gonski Success Stories

Upper Coomera State College
Upper Coomera SC is an urban Prep to Year 12 school with a highly diverse student population.
Cowandilla Primary School
Cowandilla Primary school, in Adelaide’s inner western suburbs, has an enrolment of 440 students from a wide range of socioeconomic, cultural and language backgrounds, and many students change schools regularly.
Craigmore High School
Craigmore High School, in outer northern Adelaide, has around 950 students, including 62 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and 84 students from non-English-speaking backgrounds, together with 150 students with identified disabilities.
Sydney Secondary College Leichhardt Campus
It comprising two Years 7-10 campuses (Leichhardt and Balmain) and one Year 11-12 campus (Blackwattle Bay). The Leichhardt Campus, which has 900 students, is a socioeconomically and culturally diverse middle school. Around 3 % of students are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.
Glenelg Primary School
Glenelg Primary School, located in beachside Adelaide, has 760 students from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds.
Box Hill High School
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.
Spinifex State College, Mount Isa Education and Training Precinct
It is a modern college with a junior campus (Years 7 – 9), a senior campus (years 10 – 12) and a residential campus. About half of the school’s 850 students are from low SES backgrounds, with three quarters in the lowest two SES quartiles.
Wodonga Senior Secondary College: Benalla Flexible Learning Centre
Benalla Flexible Learning Centre was established in February 2015 as a campus of Wodonga Senior Secondary College to provide an alternative educational program for young people aged between 14 and 19 years who have had difficulties with mainstream education.
Mahogany Rise Primary School
Most of Mahogany Rise’s almost 150 students are from low-income backgrounds. Around one-fifth are from non-English speaking backgrounds and there are a number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.
Merrylands High School
Merrylands High School, a comprehensive high school in western Sydney, has an enrolment of about 720 students from a diverse range of socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds.
Carina State School
Carina State School is an inner-city Brisbane multicultural school with an enrolment of approximately 325 students. Just under half of the students are from low-income backgrounds.
Cairns West State School
Cairns West State School is a primary school that serves three suburbs with the highest density of public housing in Queensland. Its enrolment of 730 culturally-diverse and complex-needs students are almost all from low-income backgrounds, and less than 9% have English as their first language.