Education authority 'refuses to work with community'
The NSW Government authority that claims "to work with the community to drive improvements in student achievement" appears to have refused to work with the local community to improve education for "struggling teenagers".
The NSW Education and Standards Authority has "roundly rejected" a proposal for an alternative school for teenage "school refusers" on the Central Coast, according to Ms Gab McIntosh of Woy Woy, one of six teachers who drafted the proposal.
The new alternative school would have opened next year.
Ms McIntosh said the authority had stopped the application "with no regard for the views of the Central Coast community".
She said the proposal was strongly supported by the PCYC and staff at Central Coast Council, but that appeared to have been ignored.
The Authority was "indifferent to pleas and needs of struggling teenagers".
The views of desperate parents wanting places for their children were disregarded.
"Common sense suggests our local politicians should have a say. But they are excluded too."
She said the authority had found numerous problems with the application, but underlying these was the insistence on the standard Year 9 and 10 curriculum, which ignored the needs of the "school refusers".
"How does that work when a good number of our rejected teenagers struggle to just read?" asked Ms McIntosh.
"We wanted to concentrate on getting their reading and writing up to scratch.
"But the Authority thought that a silly idea."
She said it "beggars belief" that the Authority could deny an appropriate education to "our most vulnerable teenagers".
Some of the Authority's almost-19th-century attitudes "verge on the destructive", she said.
"Hopefully, the new Labor government will continue to listen to those who do the hard work in the classroom, the kids themselves, teachers and principals."
SOURCE:
Media release, 21 May 2023
Gab McIntosh, Woy Woy