Yep, realised that after, went to find the figures but got distracted as I got a phone call from Council.
My rezoning has been approved. 35 lot subdivision is the next step
nice - that's a decent project
Government selling our schools (warning may contain rant)
- Thread starter Tim86
- Start date
nice - that's a decent project
This is true but the numbers of students is ballooning so funding per student is dropping at the same time as we are saying "no" to more federal Gonski funding. And funding to individual schools has been cut if their enrolments are not growing - whether they are independent public schools or not. Kinda makes a mockery of the whole independent public school idea...
A school like Churchlands however gets more funding because of a massive amount of more enrolments, which is heading to 2500 students and beyond with the addition of year 7 and all the infill going on in the catchment. Carine (my old school) is going the same way. In the context of this thread, the previous decisions to close Scarborough, City Beach and Hollywood look more than just stupid now.
My daughter's class in an "independent" public primary school has 2 kids with autism and 2 more with other learning difficulties. They have a teacher's aide to assist them intensively so the main class can continue at a normal pace without disruption as these students have very difficult behaviour issues otherwise that would impact on the rest of the class.
Previously they would have had to go to a "special" school, much further away, to get an education. That school would have been very expensive to run, would have isolated these students from the rest of society and the rest of the students in the normal system would have been artificially shielded from what disability looks like, when it helps them to know. I prefer students like this to be integrated into normal classes if at all possible and I would be amazed if the current model wasn't much less expensive than the old one. In the old special schools you still had a very high number of teachers to students as this is what these students need but on top of that you also had the cost of setting up and running a completely different school as well. I can't tell you how much it means to the parents of these kids that they get to go through the normal school system...
BTW, our "independent public primary school" P&C has just been advised that $100k pa has just been cut from the school budget. For a small primary school that is a lot of money... football stadiums can go kiss my @$$.
A couple of students in my son's year had autism and aspergers. They had one teachers aud for both. The autustic child's parents had their sons name down at Guildford Grammer since before birth. When they learned of his Autism they wouldn't accept him as it would be too expensive to have him as a student. It can be quite disruptive. They stopped attending our public school few years ago. I dont think they have taken any students since then. There does seem to be special schools for them, I'm not sure of the ratio's of teachers aid to student.
I was active in the first 7 years of my kids schooling but currently not physically active but have always been happy to donate money. My kids have had some problems with literacy and numeracy. I have spent a great lot of time and effort to get them from a level of failing to being in the top performing students. Some teachers have told me in the past they are too busy to help a student who is having difficulty, a couple have been great. After having a 2.5 yr break from helping with the schools P & C I will become more active again.
Because of a closed school? Hope not.
Teachers Aides
O where do I start....
I AM a Teachers Aide and I am very very experienced with most things Autism related.
There is no such thing as a full time Aide, we are employed a grand total of 25 hours a week MAXIMUM, while the school rooms are open. I am on that level. I got a pay rise last fortnight because it is September - my pay just went up to a bit above $25 an hour. Do the maths, Ausprop. Where do you get the idea of $100K from? I work in Disability Services, you know, that taboo subject that really rich people sometimes think should not be funded at all.
Did we have this conversation last year regarding the NDIS? If so, I think I told someone to put themself in a motor vehicle crash or a sporting injury and then tell us how privileged they are to have a disability.
O where do I start....
I AM a Teachers Aide and I am very very experienced with most things Autism related.
There is no such thing as a full time Aide, we are employed a grand total of 25 hours a week MAXIMUM, while the school rooms are open. I am on that level. I got a pay rise last fortnight because it is September - my pay just went up to a bit above $25 an hour. Do the maths, Ausprop. Where do you get the idea of $100K from? I work in Disability Services, you know, that taboo subject that really rich people sometimes think should not be funded at all.
Did we have this conversation last year regarding the NDIS? If so, I think I told someone to put themself in a motor vehicle crash or a sporting injury and then tell us how privileged they are to have a disability.
Tim, I think you might be too young to know much about schools if you have only been eligible to vote for a few years. You mustn't know much about public transport either. It takes 3o minutes to get the bus from the school I work at to my home. It is 3.5 kilometres, but the bus goes round through the suburban streets rather than straight down the main road.
I'm sorry that you are upset about this. Now which school will your potential future children attend? My school has almost 1200 students and then we will get the year 7s in 2015. Each of our three local primary schools have enrolments around 1200 too. That's around 600 kids in year 7 in one community. We have two private schools as well. What does the census say about potential population growth in your suburb? Perhaps its birth rate is decreasing and the suburb doesn't really have a demand for a school in the future. I really don't know the answer to this, but that is the kind of reason why schools tend to close.
I'm sorry that you are upset about this. Now which school will your potential future children attend? My school has almost 1200 students and then we will get the year 7s in 2015. Each of our three local primary schools have enrolments around 1200 too. That's around 600 kids in year 7 in one community. We have two private schools as well. What does the census say about potential population growth in your suburb? Perhaps its birth rate is decreasing and the suburb doesn't really have a demand for a school in the future. I really don't know the answer to this, but that is the kind of reason why schools tend to close.
Well put Angel.
Our school is not considered disadvantaged by naplan standards so we have a partially funded t/a whose role is to teach teachers how to handle kids with difficulties.
Our school is not considered disadvantaged by naplan standards so we have a partially funded t/a whose role is to teach teachers how to handle kids with difficulties.
I'm 27yo, but there haven't been many state elections, hence why I was getting advice from others and I think most people don't start caring about politics until they get a bit older so aren't extremely familiar with each political party.
I'm not too sure what your point is about me saying the bus trip is 30 mins. I took all the things you mentioned into consideration when I said 30 mins. My point is that a 30 minute bus trip is rubbish compared with the 50m walk to the current school. I did just work out the exact distance to the nearest school, it's 6.5km now. Slightly more than 50m. And if what you say is true, that a 3.5km bus trip takes you 30 mins, then that makes the school around about an hours bus trip away for the school bus. But that's pretty redundant anyway as some parents at the school were saying that bus routes in our suburb have recently been cut back and there are now no buses that will take the kids to that school anyway. Also the education minister said he thinks it's acceptable to close down schools even if it means the children need to travel an extra 20kms to their new school. So I guess 6.5kms isn't as bad as it could be.
As for which school my future kids will one day attend. I have no idea. There's been a lot of parents saying they have rung the schools around us already and been rejected because they say they are full. Hopefully by the time my kids have to go to highschool they will have increased the capacity of the schools in Macgregor or Holland Park or built some new schools. Education department says Macgregor can enrol 1927 students, it's currently over 1400. So I'm not too sure what's going on for them to tell parents they are already full. Maybe what the education department says is the max is now what the school judges as the max?
As for the census. Our suburb traditionally has a lot of older people, But well, they are dying and the suburb is getting more and more families moving in. There is a lot of development with new houses being built on every street. So I wouldn't say there is less demand for the school. This is why I have a problem with the school being closed down. Because it doesn't make sense.
Even if there are 500 spots left in the nearest school, close to 400 of those spots will now be taken up by students from our community. That leaves around 100 spots left to cater for future growth in the surround 10km region. It doesn't make sense to me. And I really don't think it's because I'm young or upset, or don't know the school system or don't know the public transport system, I think it doesn't make sense because it's a stupid short sighted decision by the government.
If you are 50m from Nyanda High School, then enrol your child in Sunnybank High School. The railway station is almost beside Nyanda, and Sunnybank High is about a 5 minute walk from Sunnybank station which in turn is about 10 minutes by train from Nyanda (3 stations up the line).
Total trip around 20 minutes.
Marg
Thanks for the tip. That's a good idea.
Hi Tim, thank you for the kind response. I had no idea you were 27, that makes a lot of difference regarding my response last night. I thought you must have been about 20 or 21 based on your comment about not voting until the last state election. OK, so my apologies. Being 27 is more in line with other things you have written about in the past.
I looked at the map of high school catchment boundaries this morning when I googled Nyandra High and the kids can also catch a train inbound in the mornings to Yeronga High. I actually agree with you about the senseless closing of city high schools when the older residents are dying off and these suburbs are being replaced with young families - I care a lot about the potential closure of Everton Park High. To keep things in perspective, we used to travel long distances to school as kids, it was quite normal.
I expect that the council will have to alter bus routes for the new school year, the public doesn't have to worry about that. As Marg said, look for train services. Those 300 students affected will not all go to just one other school, they will spread out in all directions - north, south, east and west.
I looked at the map of high school catchment boundaries this morning when I googled Nyandra High and the kids can also catch a train inbound in the mornings to Yeronga High. I actually agree with you about the senseless closing of city high schools when the older residents are dying off and these suburbs are being replaced with young families - I care a lot about the potential closure of Everton Park High. To keep things in perspective, we used to travel long distances to school as kids, it was quite normal.
I expect that the council will have to alter bus routes for the new school year, the public doesn't have to worry about that. As Marg said, look for train services. Those 300 students affected will not all go to just one other school, they will spread out in all directions - north, south, east and west.
Closing down small schools is nothing new. All governments do it.
In 2010 SA had 20 schools close down to create 6 super schools. The most extreme case of restructure involving closure in one swoop that I've seen. That was under a Labor government who did this under a public private partnership.
One of these is our own zoned school which is an amalgamation of 4 high schools.
The school is about 12 - 13 km away and to get to would mean a bus to the CBD {opposite direction} and another one back out again in a slightly different direction. All up it would probably take well over an hour to get to.
The way everyone around here sees it is, we don't have a zoned public high school, and consequently almost all families send their children to private schools.
In 2010 SA had 20 schools close down to create 6 super schools. The most extreme case of restructure involving closure in one swoop that I've seen. That was under a Labor government who did this under a public private partnership.
One of these is our own zoned school which is an amalgamation of 4 high schools.
The school is about 12 - 13 km away and to get to would mean a bus to the CBD {opposite direction} and another one back out again in a slightly different direction. All up it would probably take well over an hour to get to.
The way everyone around here sees it is, we don't have a zoned public high school, and consequently almost all families send their children to private schools.
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