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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-02-24 Daily Xml
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Aberfoyle Park High School

Ms COOK (Fisher) (15:47): I rise today to inform the house of the fantastic work of one of the high schools in my electorate, Aberfoyle Park High School, and their great work in improving the attendance rates at their school. I had the great pleasure of attending the high school's governing council annual general meeting on 10 February, where I was updated on the progress of the school in improving their class attendance.

I had the honour of talking to the school's principal, Ms Liz Mead, who updated me on what the school was doing to increase attendance. The school now has improved its attendance in classrooms to 97.8 per cent, which is above the Department for Education and Child Development's goal of 95 per cent attendance. This is one of the best performing schools in the southern area.

One of the policies that has helped the school reach this goal has been the implementation of the Day Map program at the school. The Day Map program allows parents to track their child's attendance at school, giving parents a unique ability to take part in their child's education. It has been fantastic to see that so many parents of the students have actually taken this information on board to actively take part in their children's education.

The school has also paid a lot of attention to building a community within the school. They have established six houses which are overseen by one staff member for a student's time in middle school. This allows students to build a relationship throughout their middle schooling and means that in a large school students are still able to develop a close and meaningful rapport with one of the school's staff members. This relationship provides support to keep on top of their studies and provides assistance to students when they have difficulty, as well as guiding other relationships with fellow students and faculty members.

School attendance must not be underestimated in the importance of the educational development of our children. A University of Western Australia study undertaken in 2013, entitled 'Student attendance and educational outcomes: every day counts', unsurprisingly found that there is a strong correlation between school attendance and better NAPLAN results, irrespective of the student's socioeconomic situation.

The report found also that whilst there was a universally high attendance rate by students throughout primary school—usually around 92 per cent attendance rates—there is a major dip in students' attendance across years 8, 9 and 10. This attendance dip was fairly marginal amongst the most advantaged students; however, amongst the most disadvantaged students, this reduction in attendance was fairly pronounced. This is why it was so great to see that Aberfoyle Park High School has done so much work to try to improve their attendance. This improvement was especially pronounced over years 9 and 10, with improvements of 3.3 per cent and 2.1 per cent respectively.

Aberfoyle Park High School has always been committed to strong educational outcomes. It is one of three IGNITE schools in South Australia. IGNITE gives the opportunity for gifted students to further themselves during their education. The program allows students who excel academically to accelerate their middle school studies into two years instead of three. They also get the opportunity to pursue their accelerated education among other gifted colleagues.

Acceptance into this program is done on a purely merit-based acceptance, where students must demonstrate their abilities in their written language, mathematics and cognitive thinking. It is a fantastic program which ensures that all students can have access to high-quality education irrespective of their financial situation. I think that our federal minister for education could really learn something from the ethos of this school, given the recent education reform attempts.

Than you, principal Liz Mead, for your dedication to education, as well as that of all other staff at Aberfoyle Park High School. Thank you to the parent community, who have demonstrated their commitment of the high school unequivocally. This dedication across the school community will ensure a bright, creative and strong future for our community.

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