Green Square School

Location: Waterloo, Sydney

Green Square is a short to medium term program primarily for students experiencing challenges with their behaviour in a mainstream setting.

Intake for our school occurs each term, through a referral process initiated by individual public schools.

Our school aims to support students through an individual case management approach to integrate successfully back into a mainstream school, or develop skills that will enhance their ability with their education to positively engage in the wider community.

How has your school used its Gonski funding?

We have created a multi-discplinary team of health/allied health & educational professionals who offer innovative solutions and support to families with complex histories of trauma. Students enrolled into our program are offered comprehensive personalised learning plans that maximise their capacity to reengage with learning and perform better across academic social and emotional domains.

This network of support and innovation is being developed as a centre of expertise where our community of primary and secondary schools in the aree can access professional learning and one-on-one student support. Without the funding in place to train our team of teachers, occupational therapists, speech pathologists etc to work from a common patterned language, our students and families would not be able to benefit from the significant and ongoing level of support in the areas of curriculum and wellbeing.

How has Gonski made a positive difference for students?

Students are reporting increasing feelings of wellbeing, a better understanding of factors contributing to their mental health and also producing increased periods of sustained academic work as a result of the interventions used across our multi-disciplinary team.

We will be unable to 'scale-up' this program to offer support to neighbouring primary & secondary schools without the third phase of Gonksi funding. The initial phase of innovation is the direct result of Gonski

What could your school do with Gonski funding in the future?

The program we are developing will be used as a model of best practice within the department of education to improve students' access to curriculum and develop their long term wellbeing. It will prevent the need for schools to refer students to 'behaviour' schools' because hey are able to access specialist support for teachers and students at the school, drawing from our multi-disciplinary team's capacity to support other schools. This is not possible without future funding. This health/allied health/education partnership is the type of 21st century innovation that our education system needs in support of students with disabilities.