Meeting at Port Lincoln Special School, 10 August 1999 - notes
The Port Lincoln Special School is situated at the Lincoln Gardens Primary school. It is the only special school in Eyre district - an area that reaches from Port Lincoln to Oak Valley.
The large catchment area has implications for communication and service coordination. Hub meetings involve the participation of High, Primary, Junior Primary, Area and Small schools. This makes networking extremely difficult given the number of participating schools.
The student numbers at the school determine the number of staff. Sixteen students attract a staff allocation of 1 principal, 1 full-time and 2 part-time teachers. The 4 staff members are responsible for the effective running of the school as well as occupying the following positions: the South Australia Certificate of Education Representative; the Vocational Education and Training Coordinator; the Area of Study coordinator and the Work Experience coordinator. The range of mandatory administrative tasks shared by a small staff team vastly increases their workload.
Special schools must cover the spectrum of curriculum offerings in much the same way as a primary school and have the added task of adapting individual programs to suit the specific learning needs of each child.
Rurality has an impact on the extent to which special schools such as Port Lincoln can have contact with expert organisations. The Autism Association and the Down's Syndrome Association come to the school twice each year. Education Department speech pathologists visit once a term to assess the students. Since the students do not know the various experts, the assessment is not always accurate. The speech therapy service in Port Lincoln has had various difficulties attracting and keeping staff. The position has been vacant for long periods of time and there has been high staff turnover. This has meant that the value of the service has been limited.
Specialist services are very limited in Port Lincoln. The school does not have access to an occupational therapist even though this service should be available to the children once per week. Support services will not come to places like Port Lincoln for one child because of the cost. This means that the parents must travel to Adelaide for specialist treatment. The costs can be prohibitive.
The relatively small student numbers also impact on the social options available to the children. Low numbers of children in each age group with similar communication skills means that natural friendships are limited. Activities such as sport and recreation (SPARC) are not available to rural children and this limits social contact. Variation between students in each class is huge and many different programs must be coordinated to accommodate the various educational levels.
Port Lincoln is distant from other rural communities. While Whyalla, Port Augusta and Port Pirie are able to coordinate common sporting and social activities, Port Lincoln is too distant for such cooperation.
Port Lincoln has no overnight respite care or long-term accommodation facility for people with disabilities. Families either leave Port Lincoln when the child has reached post-school age, or the child is sent away from the family into long-term care. There are no post-school options for disabled children in Port Lincoln unless they are able to find work themselves. The Special School is currently facilitating a steering committee to address this problem. Given the relatively small numbers of children with disabilities, it is difficult to attract recurrent funding to any activities within the town. This makes planning very difficult for both the educational facility and for the families.
The special school has its own difficulties in attracting teaching staff to the town. This is particularly difficult when staff are required for short-term contact work.
Despite these drawbacks, the school is delivering a Vocational Education and Training horticulture course at an annexe of the school. School enrolments have increased by 30% in the last year and community links are being developed through initiatives such as the accommodation for the disabled steering committee.
Last updated 2 December 2001.
