A new regional and remote strategy is supporting remote and regional South Australian children
Whether families call Brighton or Barmera home, Catholic Education South Australia (CESA) is focused on ensuring every child in the state has access to high-quality Catholic education, regardless of their location.
CESA’s Regional and Remote Education Strategy aims to enhance outcomes and opportunities for learning relating to faith, excellence, access and growth in regional and remote Catholic schools. Currently, more than 6000 remote and regional students attend 19 Catholic schools in South Australia, guided by more than 1200 members of staff.
“The strategy is looking to support staff to be capable, confident leaders of faith and education,” says Nichii Mardon, Diocesan Director Catholic Education, Diocese of Port Pirie. “It’s about ensuring high-quality, equitable, targeted supports for student learning and wellbeing, access to curriculum opportunities that cater for a diverse range of capabilities and aspirations of children and young people in our schools, and supporting staff through accessible, high-quality staff formation and professional learning that takes account of the local community.”
The importance of community is a driving factor of the new Regional and Remote Education Strategy. “Community is such a strong feature of regionality,” Ms Mardon says. “A school is such an integral part of the local community, and our Catholic schools are a family of communities.”
The strategy is also helping to build new communities and connections between regional and metropolitan schools across the state. “We have a large college in metropolitan Adelaide that is providing multi-modal delivery of curriculum to senior secondary in one of our regional schools, along with local support,” Ms Mardon says.
“It’s providing regional students access to high-quality, specialist education and giving their metropolitan-based teachers a connection to students in a larger cohort than they might normally experience. We’re all on the journey together and supporting each other in these efforts. There’s some exciting work being done.”
Regional boarding houses are also creating strong communities while helping students overcome geographical challenges to access Catholic education. “We have two boarding houses in regional areas, one in Port Lincoln and one in Port Pirie,” Ms Mardon says. “Those communities are able to offer opportunities for families to access Catholic education if they live remotely from those towns, and provide a home-away-from-home environment for students that includes pastoral and wellbeing support.
“The boarding schools are within a vicinity that allows students to return to their home towns for weekends, where they can be with their families, connect with their local communities and engage in the activities they enjoy doing.”
As CESA continues to develop and refine its strategy to further enhance learning, wellbeing and safe outcomes for students, the benefits are already being seen in regional schools. “We are removing barriers and overcoming challenges relating to access, further improving the quality of education and leveraging the many advantages of living and learning in regional South Australia,” Ms Mardon says. “There are some key strategic foci at the moment which are providing opportunities and enhancing growth for staff and students across metropolitan and regional schools.
“The overall vision is to ensure every child in every classroom in every school has access to high-quality education. That’s what families are signing up for, and it is the learning entitlement of every child.
“We have strong partnerships that help us to achieve this – we have excellent leaders, teachers, staff and supportive families who work together to enhance the lives and learning of children in our schools.
“Every young person who has experience in a Catholic regional school will leave that community with a sense of hope, a vision to pursue whatever their dreams might be and to work to make the world a better place.”
Discover your local Catholic school - find a school tour during Catholic Schools Open Week, August 19-25 2024
Students from Catholic schools across South Australia came together earlier this month for the annual CESA STEM MAD Showcase.
The Showcase was the culmination of months of work for 170 students in Years 3 to 12 across Catholic Education SA (CESA) schools who were given the opportunity to address real world issues and social injustices in order to create solutions which Makes A Difference (MAD).
The event was sponsored by the University of South Australia and hosted at their Mawson Lakes Campus on Friday August 2, bringing together 50 student teams from 30 Catholic schools.
