Berry Street is committed to examining new practices and models of learning so that our young people and their families will be properly equipped to participate fully in community life. We understand that mainstream education can play a role in the reproduction of poverty and relative disadvantage and that for young people already considered at risk the school system can adversely affect their educational outcomes and experiences. However, we also believe that schools are an important vehicle for equipping young people with the necessary skills to participate fully in life and increasing their opportunities to a range of health, social, welfare, recreational and other support services.

Over the last decade, it is our belief that the move to autonomy and utilisation of free market principles in the delivery of welfare and educational services has had a devastating effect on those considered the most disadvantaged and marginalised. The move to self-management and local decision-making while having some merits, must not be seen by Government and schools as an opportunity to abrogate their responsibility to educate and take care of the most vulnerable and marginalised members of our society.

With new approaches to the design and delivery of education, we believe that these provide new hope and a new beginning for educational and social reform in the State of Victoria. Government must ensure that schools have a commitment to every young person in their community and this commitment must be matched with commensurate funding.

In Australia today, a number of schools are grappling with the notion of education for "community development" as a purpose that complements education for "personal development". Some are exploring this notion through the innovation of ‘full-service schooling’. These full service schools are dedicated to education for social justice and aim to create and foster relationships that are inclusive, engaging and enabling.

In Victoria, schools currently supported by the Myer Full Service School Project are working together to improve the accessibility and responsiveness of services to young people and their families. They see the picture of full-service schooling as more complex and involving than the model of full-service schooling supported and implemented at a system level by the Federal Minister for Education, Dr. Kemp which primarily focuses on the delivery of services to ‘at risk’ students.

The full service school fostered by the Myer Full-Service School aims to build a partnership with community groups and agencies in the tasks of developing the best possible communities for human habitation – communities that demonstrate in practice that they value human life and society.

While the third millennium provides promise for peace and ‘global democracy, it has also created a much more complex world with a widening of economic disparities, perceived declined in moral and ethical standards and significant social dislocation for the poor and marginalised. Without examining new practices and models of learning, our young people and their families will not be properly equipped to participate fully in community life. Existing Government policies, which encourage and promote the self-management of schools, may provide new opportunities to undertake innovative educational reform to counter these adverse factors. However, this reform will not live up to its promises of a better education system if the needs of disadvantaged young people are not addressed. Our children’s needs should not be determined by the principles of the ‘free market’ but out of a desire to create a socially just society. This Government provides a new hope and a new beginning for educational and social reform in the State of Victoria. We urge this Government to make a difference and work together in partnership with the community to build an education system committed to the principles of social justice, empowerment, access and equity.

We urge this Government to embrace the full-service school discourse borne under the progressive and socially critical educators aligned to the Australian Centre for Equity Through Education and National Schools Network to support its ongoing development in schools throughout Victoria, in partnership with the Myer Full-Service School Project.

We recommend increased resources to school Welfare Systems to ensure that Student Welfare Officers have both the time and expertise to support and access other relevant personnel and support services to students. It is inconceivable that one Student Welfare Co-ordinator can adequately service the welfare needs of 300 students.

The purpose of this paper is to comment on Berry Street’s experience and knowledge of educational responses to young people in the State of Victoria and to outline the experiences of those schools involved in the Myer Full Service School Project in building socially just school communities.

We will address sections one and five: Opportunities for Innovation and Excellence and Student Welfare and Student Services of the discussion paper where we believe our experience is of most relevance.

We will commence with a brief overview of Berry Street and outline our experience and expertise in the development of educational programs and then comment on trends in education and other Government reform policies. We will then describe the needs and experiences of young people in our care with reference to education. This will be followed by a brief overview of the Myer Full Service School Project where we will outline some of our visions and ideas for the future direction of education.

Berry Street has been providing services to Victorian children, young people and their families since 1877. As needs have changed, so too have our services. We now provide services in two metropolitan and two rural regions, from Bairnsdale, through Dandenong and the Northern Suburbs to Wodonga. With a budget of approximately $12m and 200 EFT staff, we are the largest independent child and family welfare organisation in Victoria.

Berry Street’s direct involvement in schools started six years ago in the Northern Region, with our ‘Creating New Choices’ program. It has expanded through our ‘Getting Along’ peer based mediation, School Linked Parenting programs, School-Focussed Youth Support programs, tutoring and day programs for young people excluded from school, and RISE Education Support programs in Gippsland.

We are now actively engaged in current debates and critical reform movements that expand our knowledge and experience in establishing models of education, which encourage and promote social and economic equality. We have made a significant investment and commitment to the creation of positive school communities and our organisation is now strategically placed and recognised by peak national education bodies as a key community agency in educational innovation. We were delighted when our work was recognised with a second prize in the National Australian Violence Prevention Awards in 1997.

A key to the success of our school based programs has been our recognition and capacity to develop sustaining cooperative partnerships from both within and outside the school environment and our ability to provide a continuum of care in our service delivery.

Consistent with overseas and local research our organisation recognises that tackling issues associated with youth alienation, abuse, neglect and discrimination requires a broad approach incorporating a number of strategies. Further, we recognise that school systems need to be inclusive of all young people to reduce the marginalisation, alienation and vulnerability of young people. Therefore, we are interested in whole school reform responses, which help to create positive organisational cultures and pedagogy and the development of new policies and practices that bridge the division between welfare and education.

In recognition of our unique and sustaining partnership with Banksia Secondary College and our shared commitment to educational reform and long-standing experience in working with the most disadvantaged and vulnerable communities we have been funded for three years by the Myer Foundation to establish a ‘School Partnership Research Centre’ to promote excellence in the development of relevant Full Service Schools throughout Australia (to be detailed later in this report).

Over the last seven to eight years the previous State Government put in place a number of strategies to manage its perceived fiscal and debt crisis. There were significant cuts to the education budget, which had devastating effects on the provision on welfare and education services to those considered most disadvantaged and marginalised. Kronemann (1998) reports that studies by the Smith Family and the Brotherhood of St. Laurence all testify that changes to welfare spending in schools has had the greatest effect on the poor. Given that these cuts have followed a decade of financial restraint in the Victorian Education Budget, their impact has had a greater effect on the reproduction of poverty and relative disadvantage.

Research from the Australian Education Union suggests that in Victoria our Government schools are relatively more disadvantaged than in any other State or Territory. Some examples are as follows:

• we have increased our class sizes
• our school retention rates have continued to fall
• we have the most deteriorated pupil teacher ratios that any other State or Territory
• our ratio of pupils to teaching and non-teaching staff is the lowest in any Government system in Australia and continues to deteriorate,
• our ranking of third has dropped to fifth in per capita expenditure on students
• approximately 8000 teaching positions have been lost since 1992.
• approximately 1590 primary special needs staffing and 1403 secondary special needs staffing have been cut.

The consequences of these changes have meant that there is less support and individual attention given to students and increased pressure for both teachers and students to cope with the larger class sizes and limited resources.

The possibilities for identifying young people at risk have also been adversely affected. Our experience at Berry Street is that for young people in care their opportunities to be linked into and accepted in mainstream settings have been dramatically reduced. At its crudest level they are considered a financial liability and therefore not an attractive commodity to the economically driven school system. A school’s performance is no longer measured by their efforts to cater for disadvantaged young people. These achievements do not show up nicely on the graphs and tables designed to measure a school’s performance. They also do not err favourably for future enrolments, which are defining criteria for Government funding.

According to Wiseman, the previous Government came to power with an overall commitment to debt reduction, public sector cuts, privatisation and the introduction of free-market principles in many areas of service delivery. Therefore, the cuts to education have been also compounded by cuts to other areas of service delivery, including health and welfare. For example, in 1996 - 1997 Victoria spent less than any other State or Territory in the total social and community services budget. (The Australian Education Union, 1998). These have been matched by revolutionary changes to the application and delivery service principles of healthcare and welfare services.

At the same time as this strategy, there has been an increased interest in discourses on collaboration and integration, early intervention and prevention and resiliency in the education sector and community services area. It was argued that to avert social issues such as neglect, abuse and deprivation our educational and other service systems need to team up with other social agencies to protect the development of the whole child.

In response to the increased alienation and social distress experienced by young people, the previous Victorian Government developed a number of policy positions and frameworks to strengthen the family unit, increase resiliency amongst young people, and improve the coordination and delivery of welfare and delivery of welfare and educational supports.

It is has been found that the development of partnerships between schools, human service agencies, churches, businesses, local Governments and volunteer organisation are the key to achieving robust and relevant outcomes to young people, their families and the community.

Essentially there is nothing wrong with the concept that schools should be linked closer to their community supports and resources. However, any attempt to create an equitable and just education system is clearly undermined by a diminishing commitment to resources. Further, strategies aimed at making young people more resilient are minimised if structural barriers are not removed which impede young people access to educational opportunities. For example, the Department of Education’s initiatives ‘Schools of the Third millennium’ and The School Focused Youth Service may prove to be an important step in nurturing our ‘social capital’ - our children. However, autonomy and the utilisation of free market principles will not guarantee better educational outcomes for students. The willingness to nurture our social capital must be matched with commensurate funding and commitment to ensure that all young people are catered for.

We believe strongly that Government must take responsibility to ensure that all young people have access to the benefits of education. The move to self-management and local decision-making has some merits, but it must not be seen by schools as an opportunity to abrogate their responsibility to educate and take care of the most vulnerable and marginalised members of our society.

Our current Government provides a new hope and a new beginning for educational and social reform in the State of Victoria. It must ensure that schools have a commitment to every young person in their community. We believe that this can be best achieved through full-service schooling.

Berry Street has a reputation for working with the most disadvantaged and vulnerable members of our community. Berry Street’s core student population live in substitute care; that is, in residential units, with Foster/Home-based care families in the community, or in semi-independent, supported accommodation, for example, with a volunteer lead tenant. The protective concerns that brought them into the care of the State means most have been victims of abuse or extreme neglect. Many come from families with a history of poverty and disadvantage passed from generation to generation. A high proportion of the young people have experienced frequent changes of residence, both when at home and in care, and of caregivers. Residential changes and low social and behavioural skills have impacted on their educational placements. Consequently, these students have an educational history of disruption and multiple school placements. One young person in Berry Street’s care had attended 16 schools in 5 years. This is not a rare occurrence and their social and economic disadvantages mean that they are often isolated and marginalised from most educational systems.

It comes as no surprise then that a study conducted in March 1995 by Kildonan Child and Family Services ‘Getting an Education in CARE’ found that over half of children in residential care had below or well below average developmental profiles in literacy, numeracy, social or emotional/behavioural skills. As they get further behind, the young person’s sense of self worth continues to diminish and they act out their frustration in various ways - self-harm, acting out, violence towards others, non-attendance or truancy. The Kildonan study found that, of young people in residential are aged 13 years or more, over 50% were absent from school due to truancy, exclusion or suspension. Our experience is consistent with these findings.

Education is a significant institution in our community and for the majority of young people is the doorway to opportunity, self-improvement and a better future. For many of the young people in substitute care this is not the case and their family history of poverty, disadvantage and dysfunction is perpetuated.

From our experience, visiting other Australian programs such as the Galilee Education Program (A.C.T.), Bowden Brompton Community School (S.A.) and Berengarra (Vic.) seriously at risk students can be described as having some or all of the following characteristics:

• An inability to cope with large school settings, inflexible and alienating education structures, curriculum and teaching strategies;
• Family conflict, breakdown or homelessness;
• Low self esteem;
• Persistent disruptive, aggressive behaviour or violence to other students and/or staff and property;
• Long term truancy or school refusal;
• Experience of academic failure;
• Offending or illegal behaviour;
• Misuse of substances.

We believe the following factors are relevant for good educational outcomes for disadvantaged young people.

• A small, safe environment for learning – a maximum of 20 students.
• A program that is accepting of the student and focuses on their strengths.
• A non-coercive pedagogy and flexibility in responding to individual needs.
• Activities to increase self-esteem and social, group and behavioural skills.
• Activities to increase literacy and numeracy skills.
• Time, patience and persistence. Enrolment should last as long as the student requires it. From our experience that would be at least a year, usually two.
• Low student/teacher ratio – 5:1 maximum.
• Interagency and school links so that students can utilise their services when needed.
• Close liaison with parents, caregivers and case workers.
• Student engagement with and ownership of the program

We recommend increased resources to school Welfare Systems to ensure that Student Welfare Officers have both the time and expertise to support and access other relevant personnel and support services to students. It is inconceivable that 1 Student Welfare Co-ordinator can adequately service the welfare needs of 300 students.

Berry Street has a strong commitment to the development of socially just communities and perceives the full-service school model of education as a key to creating equity in education and welfare. Our organization and the schools involved in the Myer Full-Service School Project recommend that Government fund the further development of Full-Service Schools. The model we describe below is not the model of full-service schooling currently funded and implemented at a system level by the Federal Minister for Education, Dr. Kemp.

In Victoria, schools currently supported by the Myer Full Service School Project are working together to improve the accessibility and responsiveness of services to young people and their families. They see the picture of full-service schooling as more complex, long term and involving than the model of full-service schooling supported by the Federal Minister for Education, Dr. Kemp. which primarily focuses on the delivery of services to ‘at risk’ students.

As stated previously, Banksia Secondary College and Berry Street have been funded by the Myer Foundation to establish a Research Centre. The Centre will provide a focus for expanding our knowledge of full-service schooling, across Victoria and nationally, and to explore a range of FSS practices and sites. This project will build on the expertise and experience already developed through the Australian Council for Equity through Education/National Schools Network Full Service Schools Research Circle, which was funded between 1997 – 1999 by the Australian Youth Foundation.

In the interest of developing and promoting a culture which values the development of strategic alliances and joint partnerships a Reference Group has been established comprising representatives of the education, community, business and Government sectors.

The Research Circle formed under the ACEE/NSN project has also been re-formed. In addition to Banksia Secondary College (Heidelberg), four other Victorian schools are receiving support to continue their learning and efforts to build FSS sites of practice: Woolum Bellum KODE School (Morwell), Canadian Lead Primary School (Ballarat), Marian College (Sunshine) and Mary McKillop Primary School (Keilor).

The five schools working in the project seek to act in more enlightened and informed ways and utilise The Research Circle for continuous and critical reflection. We see it as the pathway for change and an opportunity for schools to engage in a dialectical process to reflect on the integration of practice and theory. All of the schools testify that the process of transformation and engagement needs time and ongoing support. However, we believe that Research Circles are the most effective way to build full-service schools and research the practice.

The Myer project is undertaking two other critical tasks:

1. It will conduct an education campaign to promote FSS schooling as a best practice model for building inclusive, engaging and enabling school community-agency linkages, and develop models of education which redress the poverty and disadvantage experienced by marginalized and ‘at risk’ groups of young people and families.
2. It will complete a scoping exercise to determine the range of other initiatives going on in the field that relate to the concept of the ‘Full-Service’ school. The research will also determine its value and applicability in the Australian context.

Below is an excerpt from The Aspirations of the Full-Service School: Individual and Community Development drafted by Stephen Kemmis and Theresa Lynch for the Myer Full Service School Project. The document is not the final edict on full-service schooling. Rather it is a document intended to promote our discourse and facilitate critical reflection both within the education and welfare sectors. We believe the document provides useful insight into the struggles and challenges for those seeking opportunities for innovation and excellence.

If a school focuses solely on individuals, it cannot produce a socially just community or society. To build a socially just society, it must build real relationships between real people – relationships of a particular kind. The kinds of relationships characteristic of a socially just community are ones that foster self-expression, self-realization and self-determination for each individual and for all. These are the opposite of the kinds of relationships that constitute injustice – relationships disfigured by domination and oppression.

In Australia today, a number of schools are grappling with the notion of education for community development as a purpose that complements education for personal development. Some are exploring this notion through the innovation of ‘full service schooling’. These full service schools are dedicated to education for social justice. They aim to create and foster relationships that are inclusive, engaging and enabling.

Against principles and practices that exclude people, these schools aim to create relationships that include people in valued social groups. They seek ways to recognize and respect difference, and to celebrate difference as a source of strength and vitality in the community.

Against principles and practices that alienate and isolate people from one another, they aim to create relationships that engage people in valued and worthwhile activities. They seek ways to make learning and living engaging and worthwhile for young people and their communities.

Against principles and practices that disable people, or that enable some at the expense of others, they aim to create relationships that are enabling personally for each and collectively for all. They seek ways to show that, by using their own knowledge, values and efforts, young people and communities can have increased power over their own lives.

They aim to be inclusive and engaging in order to be enabling. They aim to enable people to develop the means for personal and collective self-expression, self-realization and self-determination.

In the view of those advocating full service schooling, these ideals are not to be thought of as abstract or utopian. People in these full service schools expect to see these kinds of relationships realized – made real – not only in the life and practices of the school but also in the wider community beyond the school gates. They judge their success by the extent to which they are inclusive, engaging and enabling for individuals and groups within the school, and in the wider community beyond the school. And, in particular, they aim to be inclusive, engaging and enabling in the way they conduct the relationship between the school and the community.

The full service school pays attention to the needs of disadvantaged and excluded students, but not only to these young people. Many schools aim or claim to attend to the special needs of marginalized students. The full service school is one that aims and claims to create conditions that allow each and all – to a greater extent than is now possible – to make and remake the conditions of their own lives. That is, the full service school sets out to help students, families and communities to overcome the

conditions and that trap some people in disabling circumstances, and that sustain their disadvantage and exclusion. But it does not focus only on those with special needs, or on students at risk. It aims to create inclusive, engaging and enabling conditions for all.

It aims to welcome families, the community and a variety of other agencies, service providers and professionals into the school to help build these kinds of relationships in the community as a whole.

It also aims to reach out to young people who have dropped out of school, building bridges back into the school for those who want to return.

The full service looks for evidence that it is achieving its aims. It is committed to researching its own practice, to discover the extent to which it is achieving its aims not only inside the school, but also in the wider community and in the relationship between the school and the community.

The full service school aims to play an active and reconstructive role in the life of individuals, and in the life cycle of communities. Schools always play some part in the life cycle in which communities produce, reproduce and transform themselves over the generations. The full service school sees its work not just as a contribution to individual development and the lives of individuals, but also as a contribution to community development.

To do this, the full service school needs the active involvement of its community. It reaches out to include, engage and enable families and the community in the dual task of individual development and community development. In reaching out, it does not assume that schools are the sole or even the primary site through which individuals and communities develop. It recognizes that families and many community groups and agencies have roles to play in both personal and community development. The full service school aims to find its place in these processes alongside families and other groups and agencies. It aims to make the school site hospitable to students, to their families, and to other community groups and agencies that share its commitment to the well being of each individual and the community as a whole.

On the one hand, this means making schools hospitable to tasks of personal and community development that families and community groups set for themselves. The school regards its curriculum, teaching and learning methods, and school organization and culture as presenting opportunities for integrating community development tasks into the life of the school.

On the other hand, it means that the school must be hospitable to other agencies, service providers and professionals. This feature is emphasized in what some describe as the ‘integrated services’ approach to full service schooling (though this is only a partial description of the full service school). The integrated services approach aims to make family, community, health, housing and other services accessible through the school – through the school site, or by coordinated initiatives with other agencies.

A complete approach to full service schooling involves both community development and the integration of services.

A full service school sees its curriculum, its activities of learning and teaching, and its approach to school organization and culture as means towards a dual end: serving the interests of individual students and their families and communities. The curriculum, teaching and school organization are some of the mechanisms by which the school can express its care for both students and the community. But the school also wants to be responsive to the community – to be a site through which the community can express its care for young people. It aims to be a site through which the community can develop its aspirations for collective self-realization and self-determination.

The full service school aims to build a partnership with community groups and agencies in the tasks of developing communities fit for human habitation – communities that demonstrate in practice that they value human life and society.

Both school and community aim to demonstrate this care for one another at the level of the whole life cycle of the community. Together, they aim to make collective self-realization and self-determination more possible for all.

Equally, at the level of the relationships between individuals (whether in the school or the community), both school and community aim to strengthen and support the other, to make self-realization and self-determination more possible for each individual in the community.

People in full service schools recognize that the knowledge and resources of individuals are limited, but that they can be extended and supported through cooperation and collaboration between people and groups. They also recognize that different kinds of experience, education and expertise must be brought together to realize the interconnected goals of individual and community development. They encourage cooperative work by professionals from diverse backgrounds – teachers and social workers, for example. They also encourage cooperation between people with different kinds of responsibilities for students inside and outside the school – parents and other care-givers, teachers, local Government officers, and the like.

Full service schools work to overcome the fragmentation that accompanies specialization of services and service provision, by shared acknowledgement that different kinds of services have a combined impact on a student, a family, or a whole community. They aim to coordinate different kinds of service provision so that students, families and communities benefit from their combined efforts, and to avoid working at cross-purposes with one another (at the expense of individual students, or families or the community). Thus, they foster respect for the distinctive strengths and distinctive expertise of people from different professions and agencies, and of people with different kinds of relationships and responsibilities for young people.

Children, young people and adults all too often feel that they live their lives according to scripts written by others, constrained by circumstances beyond their control. Full service schools, working together with communities and with other agencies and service providers, aim to help children and young people become the authors - and critical readers - of the conditions of their own lives and the lives of their communities.

For more than a century, many innovations in schooling have wrestled with this task. Some have approached the goal, and some have failed. Those developing the idea of the full service school share many of the aspirations of earlier generations of progressive and socially critical educators. But the problems they want to address are stubborn, with deep roots in history, tradition, and social, cultural and economic structures that often sustain alienation and injustice even where they aim to ameliorate them. Those who champion the full service school – like other innovators before them – aim to make a difference. This time, however, the innovators do not see the task as one that schools must undertake alone.

From the outset, full service schools are working with people, groups and agencies outside schools to develop inclusive, engaging and enabling ways of working, towards the shared goals of individual and community development."