New developments from Catholic Education South Australia are supporting every student from Reception to graduation
With a focus on enabling every child to learn and thrive, Catholic Education South Australia (CESA) is expanding its resources, both within and without school walls.
In the outside space, CESA is continuing to grow, with two new schools set to open before the end of the decade and new strategies in place for regional communities.
Within schools, CESA released an independent review of its policies, programs and support arrangements for students with disability in March 2020 to learn what it is doing well, what it should do less of and what it should do better. Since then, much has changed – including a key focus on making use of allied health services to better support students and staff.“The allied health focus is to acknowledge that many young people in schools now do receive allied health support,” CESA executive director Dr Neil McGoran says. “When they do, that’s very much in a therapeutic and medical model, working one-on-one with the student, giving advice to family, to the student and the teacher.
“Our next iteration is how that allied health provision – occupational therapists, speech pathologists, psychologists to name a few – can work most productively with staff, building their capacity and ensuring that every adult working with the child is working in concert on getting the best learning outcomes. Because fundamentally, as schools, our role is to ensure that every child is learning and that learning is improving.
“We’re going to more formally launch that in 2025 but we’ve been doing a lot of groundwork, listening to students, staff and families, acknowledging what’s working and what are the areas of improvement.”
Taking its lead from the recent Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care, CESA is looking to expand its number of long day care centres strategically co-located with Catholic schools. “We’re also planning to increase our sessional preschools, particularly in regional and low socio-economic areas, which are probably not the places commercial operators are going to go but where Catholic education should be,” Dr McGoran says. “We want to ensure we engage with children as young as we can in their learning. With good teaching and proper integrated intervention, we can wrap support around children and their families, ensuring the early years are successful, their transition into schooling is successful; and, ultimately they graduate at the end of Year 12 with their SACE qualification but also with a real passion and knowledge to make a difference in the world.”
CESA has also partnered with the Department for Child Protection to ensure any child who is under the guardianship of the chief executive, under care or in foster care can access free education at a Catholic school for the duration of their studies.
“We started with 100 and now have more than 500 under that scheme now,” Dr McGoran says. “Every day I approve another scholarship.
“For us as Catholic educators, it’s what we do, offering preferential options for those who are marginalised, perhaps vulnerable. In our minds, it’s ‘If you want to come to a Catholic school, you can, there’s no barrier.’ Let’s make it work as best we can.”
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