Wadalba Community School

Location: Waldalba, central coast NSW

Wadalba Community School, located on the NSW Central Coast, is a comprehensive P-12 school with an enrolment of 1,400 students. 75% of students are from low-income backgrounds, 8% of students are Indigenous, and 7% of students are from non-English-speaking backgrounds. Special needs students are integrated into mainstream school programs.

How Wadalba Community School has used Gonski funding

Wadalba PC has received around $516,000 of Gonski funding in 2014-2015. This has been targeted to lift performance by increasing support and individual attention to students, enhancing the school’s professional learning program, and establishing new classes to meet the needs of particular students, both advanced learners and those requiring targeted support. The aims are being met through employment of teacher-trained speech pathology and paraprofessionals to work with individual students, establishing a new class in Year 8 & ( to support vulnerable students, creating an advanced leaner maths/science class, introducing Advancement for Individual Determination – a Yr 8 program aimed at supporting students to graduate from school to university, especially where they are the first in their family to do so, and greater access for staff to high-quality professional learning across a wide area of practice.

How Gonski funding has made a difference for students

The new class to support vulnerable Yr 8 & ( students has achieved outstanding learning outcomes for students, through the capacity it provides to focus more intensively on individual student learning needs. Teachers have shared the teaching and learning strategies used with this class with their colleagues, providing a benefit to the whole staff. Students from the advanced maths/science class have bene invited to participate in an accelerated physics class where they will complete their preliminary HSC course in Year 10. Provision of information about the benefits of the new programs to student learning, motivation and expanded study have led to increased parental involvement in the school.

What Wadalba Community School could do with Gonski funding in the future

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