Meadow Flat Public School

Location: Meadow Flat, NSW

Meadow Flat Public School is a small school. Our students come from rural localities between Lithgow and Bathurst in Central West NSW.

In total our school has received $35 000 in Gonski funding over three years. This year an extra $5 000 will be provided to our school. This means we will have a total of $39 000 in additional funds to support our students.

How has your school used its Gonski funding?

In 2016 Meadow Flat Public School used our Gonski funding to provide additional literacy and numeracy support for identified students by employing additional classroom teacher time and SLSO support.

From the start of 2016 until Term 2, our school was not able to have x3 fulltime classes as our student population was one short. Our staffing allocation was boosted by using Gonski funds to provide a third fulltime classroom teacher. This meant that classes were kept as three separate groups up to lunch time for 5 days of the week. When additional enrolments arrived we were able to have three full time due to the increase in our staffing allocation.

This meant that we could refocus the use of our Gonski funds to employ teacher aides to implement one-on-one literacy and numeracy assistance.

How has Gonski made a positive difference for students?

Gonski funding is getting results at Meadow Flat Public School. You can see it in the classrooms. You can see it in the kids. Help ensure that the funding is delivered in full and no child misses out.

As a result of Gonski funds our students showed improvements with their literacy and reading skills. We had consistency and continuity in teaching practice, less disruption to students’ learning, greater support for individual students, and enhanced the home – reading program.

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

With the Gonski funds we have been able to better support our students. As we look towards the future we are planning on using our Gonski funds to improve our reading results by targeting students’ reading comprehension. We need the full funding of the Gonski program by the Commonwealth Government because it still does not allow us to address the additional programs that we could implement, such as:

- Increasing the number of student who get one on one help with reading and maths;

- Increase the time the teachers have outside the classroom to work together on how to better meet the needs of students; and

- Improve the facilities of the school to meet the needs of 21st century learners by increasing technology in our classrooms.

<<< 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.