What has the school done with its Gonski funding?
Unfortunately, schools in Tasmania have not received their full Gonski funding due to a decision by the state government not to pass that funding directly on to schools, and to introduce its own cuts to schools budgets in 2015.
Despite this, the school has big plans for using their extra resources to benefit students.
Location: Swansea
What Swansea Primary School could do with Gonski funding in the future
- Extend targeted literacy and numeracy support across a greater number of students.
- Provide an enriching and diverse learning program, including Music (choir, band, guitar), Art, Health and P.E and Languages (Japanese, Indonesian or French).
- Reinstate our annual camp for grades 3-6.
- Further targeted support for students who need assistance e.g. a speech pathologist, school psychologist or social worker.
- Digital technologies across the school to equip students for future learning.
- Reinstate our program to extend gifted and talented students.
- Swansea Primary would also attract guaranteed additional funding due to our small, isolated school status.
It has a diverse student population of around 1,100, with a third of the school’s students in the two lowest SES quartiles. Indigenous students make up 6 per cent of the school population and a further 6 per cent of students are from non-English speaking backgrounds.
Katoomba High School, a comprehensive secondary school in the Blue Mountains of NSW, has an enrolment of about 670 students about half of whom are from low-income backgrounds.
