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.