Accrediting Alternative Education
When school returns in South Australia at the end of January, some 5,000 young people will be enrolled in alternative education programs across the state, catholic and independent sectors. The Flexible Learning Options (FLO) program in the state system will be rebranded as Tailored Learning and rolled out to all schools. Specialised Assistance Schools (SAS) will continue to grow in the Catholic and Independent sectors and offer a fee-free alternative to mainstream schooling.
The growth in alternative placements reflects a trend around Australia, where small, relational, and trauma-informed schools provide a place where young people can receive wrap-around support to re-engage with education. For some students, this works out well, and they find a place of safety where their needs are met in these schools. Helen Connelly, the SA Commissioner for Children and Young People wrote in the 2020 publication on suspension and exclusion, The Blame Game
“The most optimistic stories were about a few children and young people accessing Flexible Learning Options (FLO). These multi-disciplinary environments, which incorporate case management support and focus on each child's context and learning needs, were working. Many young people who had struggled to fit into a mainstream school described positive learning outcomes through FLO programs.” The Blame Game, 2020, p.39
The downside is that formal outcomes for these students are meagre, and attainment in SACE and VET outcomes is negligible. This means there is a lack of articulated pathways to further education and work, which leaves the young people enrolled in these programs vulnerable when they leave without recognition of their learning. The 2020 Department for Education Learning and Earning Report found:
“FLO students (in DfE) were less likely than other students to be undertaking or have completed the four mandatory SACE subjects, to be planning to stay at school until the end of the year or to be planning to complete SACE this year. Among leavers, former FLO students were likelier than other students to not be in employment, education or training, were less happy with what they had achieved since leaving school, and were less likely to agree that they had successfully transitioned from school strongly”. Learning and Earning Research Project, 2020, p.120
FLO/TL and SAS are usually small, community-based, emphasise relationships, and can offer personalised learning. They provide a range of engagement activities, including a VET and wellbeing curriculum. Central to their ethos is being responsive to their students' social, emotional, and mental health needs. Care and a concentration on wellbeing and mental health are central to all FLO/TLP and SAS. The issue they face is that the Australian Curriculum and the South Australian Certificate of Education have been developed within a “grammar of schooling” that does not reflect the day-to-day reality of the lives and learning of young people in alternative sites.
Expecting the alternative sites to do all the heavy lifting on changing curriculum and pedagogy will continue to increase the number of alternative placements while retention continues to fall.
The existing Australian Curriculum and SACE frameworks are predicated on an age-related grammar of schooling, broken into discreet subjects taught by specialist teachers in blocks of time over a week/term and year. Vocational Education and Training curriculum is often adjunct to the mainstream curriculum in senior schools and has its own “grammar.” The organisation and day-to-day life of the alternative schools are of a wrap-around provision with generalist teachers and a range of adults other than teachers. The task of retrofitting existing curriculum frameworks designed for a very different “grammar” is unsatisfactory and often creates a mish-mash curriculum that does not serve the long-term interests of these students well.
For the new TL program and SAS, the necessary pedagogical and curricular work to enable significantly more students to complete SACE and negotiate the following steps to career-based work and study still needs to be completed. The initial step must be to redefine senior schooling in disadvantaged, remote, and rural locations to ensure that mainstream education can retain young people. This will involve reframing the SACE not as “the end of school” but as a point along an articulated career path towards further education, work and community life.
This enables us to look at the SACE in a new light and find ways of bringing the hopes and aspirations of FLO/TL and SAS students closer to the SACE's hopes and aspirations. Within the SACE structures, changing the focus of SACE to recognise learning achievement is possible. It would mean articulating the capabilities that young people can achieve through their studies.
Our research has shown that young people can be successful when their lives and aspirations are reflected in the curriculum of the senior years of school and that this can be accommodated within the SACE. The aim is to increase the number of young people who can access a meaningful education with accreditation in a timely manner and position them to benefit from economic growth,