​Glen Innes High School

Location: Glen Innes, NSW, Australia

We are a rural comprehensive co-educational high school of 515 students with a 15% Aboriginal student enrolment. We offer a diverse curriculum that enables our students to succeed across the range of academic, technical, vocational, sporting/athletic, creative and performing arts subjects. Our school serves a community that is notable for its proud traditions of achievement, but also some profound areas of socioeconomic disadvantage. Five of Australia's 10 lowest-income postcodes are within a relatively short drive of the school.

How has your school used its Gonski funding?

In NSW, Gonski funding comes to our school through a departmental budget known as the 'RAM' (Resource Allocation Model). For the last few years, when our Gonski funding is announced to the school, our teachers and executive staff have made proposals for various ways to expend the budget in targeted programs to support students across the school. Our Gonski funds are assigned in a transparent and accountable fashion where it is possible to review every year the results of our full range of programs and adjust funding accordingly to areas of need and areas where it has proven most effective.

How has Gonski made a positive difference for students?

Across all subject areas, we have been able to arrange a host of educational experiences including excursions for our students that would not otherwise be affordable for them. The everyday achievement of students has steadily improved year-on-year since the introduction of Gonski funds, and our 2016 HSC results were our best for many years, and received a mention in the Sydney Morning Herald as one of the top-10 NSW schools that are "punching above our weight".

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

We can provide an even more supportive learning environment for all students once the Gonski funds targeted to students with a disability come on-stream. This is because we will be able to assign more hours for direct tutors and aides to students with special needs, which in turn creates a more consistent and stable learning environment that benefits every other student in the classroom, in addition to the individual students who receive specialist support.

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