Our area’s small schools face the beginning of term one each year with fear as they struggle to enrol enough students to ensure teacher numbers can remain constant.
One or two students can make the difference between keeping or losing a teacher in local schools and this is a change that would greatly impact a small school of around 80 students, like Wallacia Public School.
Wallacia Public School currently has four teachers but for a time it seemed that this number would be reduced to three in 2014.
“Every year we have a number set by the Department [of Education and Communities] that we have to make [if we are to keep all our teachers]. This year was very, very close but every year is the same,” said Acting Principal, Fiona Tritton.
“We really were right on the wire this year.”
Losing a teacher would increase the class sizes, moving from two-stream to three-stream classes and put extra stress on teachers, but according to Ms Tritton, would not impact on a student’s learning experience.
The small schools are beginning to lose students to larger K-12 private schools, especially those near built-up or new housing areas.
“Wallacia is becoming an older area and we don’t get a lot of growth like other areas. There are no new housing areas opening up nearby this year,” Ms Tritton said.
Wallacia is one of four schools in a local ‘small schools network’, that struggle to come up with the right numbers each year, a fact that parents don’t quite understand.
“A lot of the families in our area go to big private schools but there is no need – Wallacia Public School is the most beautiful little rural school,” said parent, Tammy Footit.
“Being small in size, our students get so much more attention from their teachers and there is less bullying too – of course there is still the odd nastiness but it is more easily managed.”
The Department of Education and Communities said that the process is in place to ensure the fair distribution of teachers across the state.
“Where enrolments increase during the year to a level which provides an additional teacher under the staffing formula, the school’s teacher entitlement will be adjusted. There is no reduction in teacher entitlement where enrolments decrease at a school after the February census date,” a spokesperson said.
