2022 SATA VET Innovation for Schools Finalists

Port Augusta - 'the crossroads to Australia' and the gateway to South Australia's outback region, is situated at the top of Spencer Gulf with a population of approximately 13,800. Port Augusta Secondary School (PASS) is a category 2 school located 300km north of Adelaide. In 2022 the school welcomed their first intake of Year 7 students from 6 feeder Primary Schools. The 2022 enrolment is approximately 829 students, Year 7-12, including 44% Aboriginal enrolment and approximately 16% of students being recognised as having a disability.

Since co-location from 2 campuses in 2011, PASS has evolved and responded to the everchanging complexities of the community. The school has over 100 staff, including carefully selected teachers across all curriculum areas, highly skilled support staff (SSO’s, ASETO’s) and leadership structure that reflects the school’s priorities.’

Major building projects have also occurred over the past 10 years, including state of the arts Trade Trading Centre, Stem and Visual Arts buildings. In 2021 a two-story building was completed to accommodate the new Year 7 cohort; this also included a modern Home Economics centre.

PASS provides a variety of programs and initiatives that are unique in many ways to secondary education and lead the way for other schools across the region and the state. The school has a strong stable executive leadership structure which has worked together for over 10 years. Their SACE and NAPLAN results and destination data have all improved over the past 10 years, with PASS being the school of choice for many families in the region.

Thebarton Senior College is a specialist public senior secondary school as well as a Registered Training Organisation accredited to deliver nationally recognised training in the areas of Entrepreneurship and New Business, Workplace Skills, Construction, Community Services, Information Technology, Further Study Skills and Screen and Media. Other nationally recognised training in Early Childhood Education and Care, Individual Support and Engineering are delivered for students by other RTOs. The College is also the only New Arrivals Program provider for senior secondary students in Adelaide.

Students at the college are generally over 15 years of age and are working to complete their South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE), complete VET qualifications or learn English in the New Arrivals Program; with over 1000 students accessing courses in each academic year.

The college offers over 150 SACE subjects allowing students to customise their SACE to suit their aspirations. The college has part-time as well as full-time study options as well as a flexible timetable, allowing students to combine an enrolment at another school with completing VET qualifications or SACE subjects at the college. The College draws its students from all parts of the greater metropolitan and regional areas.

The college is a Department for Education preferred provider for delivery of VET to school students in a range of Flexible Industry Pathways, as well as an approved Skills SA provider to deliver training to school-based trainees in both metropolitan and regional areas.

NASSSA; an alliance of twelve, Northern Adelaide schools, formed to increase learning opportunities, career pathway considerations, SACE, apprenticeship/traineeship, VET retention and educational outcomes for more than 10 000 students. This is achieved through Inter-school collaboration:

• Cross-school Curriculum Action Teams (i.e., English, Health/PE, Mathematics, Digital Technology, Design/Technology etc) who plan, undertake Professional Development and practice interschool, continuous improvement strategies (i.e., moderation, explore task design, prepare teaching resources together) to improve outcomes, learning engagement and curriculum quality for students.
• Special Area Teams (VET, Career Development, Wellbeing, Aboriginal Education, Inclusive Education, FLO, and English as a Second Language (EALD), Deputies and Leaders Teams). Schools share knowledge, ideas, resources and connect with local community/industry partners wherever possible.

NASSSA focuses on identifying and implementing educational innovation, improving students’ transition through/from school, catering to students who are from diverse cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. They are a key link between schools, community, industry partners, universities and RTOs across Northern Adelaide.

NASSSA coordinates nationally accredited Vocational Education and Training (VET) delivery program to ensure comprehensive, accessible offerings across alliance schools, allowing students to make meaningful connections between learning, and imagining and planning their future.

Courses are hosted locally or across alliance schools so students can access a broad variety of VET offerings. If schools worked alone, they might offer one or two courses, significantly diminishing the variety of pathways students can explore and prepare for. Otherwise, students would attend ‘publicly offered’ courses – a daunting and potentially off-putting experience for some of our less confident learners.