Support unit
Our school's Support Unit provides specialist and intensive support for eligible students with a diagnosed intellectual disability or Autism Spectrum. The class sizes in our Support Unit classes are smaller than in mainstream classes because of the students’ higher needs.
Collaborative Classrooms
The Support Unit operates as part of our Collaborative Classrooms initiative.
A collaborative class is made up of a Support Unit class and a mainstream class which are positioned side by side in adjoining classrooms. The purpose of the collaborative classes is to enable students who experience a disability to access learning and other activities alongside mainstream students.
The Collaborative Classrooms initiative has achieved the many goals. Here are some examples of it positive impact:
- By positioning a Support Unit class and a Mainstream class side by side, the Collaborative Class enables many opportunities for students experience a disability to interact and participate in activities with mainstream students. This includes sharing indoor break time together, participating in PE lessons together, doing assembly items together being in a class photograph together.
- Student without a disability build resilience, empathy and understanding as their learn alongside students who experience a disability. Students thrive when given many opportunities to work collaboratively in a classroom of diverse abilities.
- Students enrolled in the Support Unit typically live outside the Ashfield Public School catchment. This means families of these students are not local to our community and can feel isolated. The Collaborative Class initiative means that parents of student enrolled in the Support Unit become part of a larger class. For example, by joining the Collaborative Class Whatsapp parent group, the parents of students enrolled in the Support Unit feel included and maintain interactions with other parents. Their children who were once separated in the Support Unit, now have the opportunity to be included in playdates and birthday parties.
- Teachers on the Mainstream Classes and teachers on the Support Unit classes work collaboratively which increases the ability of our staff to develop resources and teaching strategies that engage students who experience a disability and enable them to make progress.
Enrolment in the Support Unit
If you live within the Ashfield Public School catchment area
If you live outside the Ashfield Public School catchment area