Croydon Community School

"One student at a time in a community of learners"

Croydon Community School provides young people with an alternative secondary school experience in a nurturing environment.

v

A MESSAGE

from the Principal

Welcome to Croydon Community School.

On behalf of our school community, I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land our school sites stand on. The Wurundjeri people and the Kulin nations’ culture and customs have nurtured this land and we value their contributions to life and the education of generations of Australians past, present, and future.

I am extremely honoured to continue to lead Croydon Community School. The school is a Big Picture Learning school, which means that we are part of a worldwide network that prioritises the needs, interests, and passions of each individual learner. The requirements of the Victorian Curriculum and Senior Certificates are of critical importance in our pursuit of educational excellence for every young person within our community. However, we value to International Big Picture Learner Credentials (IBPLC), student portfolios, exhibitions, and narratives as the most accurate and descriptive assessments of our students’ true abilities.

In term 2, 2022, we moved to our beautifully designed, purpose-built facilities on Croydon Rd, Croydon (main entrance off Samuel St). The sadness of leaving our old, well-loved site has been replaced with the endless potential our new facilities provide. We have adapted our timetable to better reflect our Big Picture Learning model, with students making smooth transitions between specialist areas to extend their individual learning plans and passion projects.

On behalf of the North East Region of DET we manage other educational programs to assist children and young people in our area successfully complete secondary education and transition to rich post-secondary opportunities. These programs are:

An onsite re-engagement program that provides a stepped program for 12–17-year-old students who have not attended any school for a long time.
Woori Yallock Farm School, which primarily provides Certificate courses in Conservation and Land Management, and Horticulture. It is accessed by many schools in the outer east.

Our approach across the school ensures we realise the Victorian Government’s Education State targets of:

Learning for life. More students achieving excellence in reading, maths, science, and the arts.
Happy, healthy, and resilient kids. Building the resilience of our children and encouraging them to be more physically active.
Breaking the link. Ensuring more students stay in school and breaking the link between disadvantage and outcomes for students.
Pride and confidence in our schools. Making sure every community has access to excellence, in every government school and classroom.

All our staff are responsive to the individual learning and wellbeing needs of every student. We are all committed to the principle, “One Student at a Time in a Community of Learners” and we truly enjoy watching our young people develop confidence, knowledge, skills, and a positive future focus on their learning journey through secondary school.

I look forward to meeting you at one of our school events.

Bronwyn Harcourt
Principal, Croydon Community School

About our school

Croydon Community School is a small secondary school with a strong history of providing an alternative to mainstream secondary educational settings. Many of the young people who choose to enrol at our school have not experienced learning success, or a sense of connectedness to mainstream schools for a range of reasons.

In our school we endeavour to build positive relationships between adults and our young people so that they might flourish and realise their potential. In order to facilitate these relationships we plan for smaller class sizes than many other schools, and students will usually have fewer teachers than their peers in mainstream secondary schools. It is not unusual for advisory teachers and education support staff to manage the same group of students throughout the duration of their secondary schooling at Croydon Community School. Find out more about our Advisory classes here.

The school is a member of Big Picture Education Australia, and has adopted the Big Picture Education design to engage students in their learning and to develop the whole child. At our school, advisory teachers, and education support staff, assist young people to set personalised learning goals based upon their passions or interests. Staff strive to enable student voice, encouraging young people to exercise as much choice as possible in their learning. Advisory teachers also ensure that the teaching and learning program as a whole meets the standards of the Victorian Curriculum F–10 and that it enables the reporting of student achievement against the achievement standards. Find out more about the Big Picture Education design here.

The school offers the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) for students in Years 11 & 12 and students may study VCAL at the Foundation, Intermediate or Senior levels. Students who wish to undertake VCE subjects as part of their senior secondary studies are supported to do so. In 2019 we partnered with Box Hill TAFE to deliver the Certificate II in Visual Arts because many of our students are passionate about the visual arts. The certificate is taught on campus at Croydon Community School. Find out more about our Visual Arts course here.

The school acknowledges that some students may need extra social, emotional or educational support at school, and that the needs of students will change over time as they grow and learn. We commit to resourcing a highly skilled wellbeing team to support young people and their families to engage with education. Find out more about our Wellbeing Team and programs here.

Croydon Community School has a Re-engagement program (‘Croydon Re-engagement Centre’) for young people who have been dis-engaged from education for a wide variety of reasons. The Re-engagement Centre’s priority is to build healthy relationships with the young people, their families and their support teams. We work in a trauma informed manner, primarily concentrating on the young person’s personal and social capabilities. Find out more about the Re-engagement Centre here.

Student Enrolments

Croydon Community School is located in the Eastern Metropolitan Region and attracts children from Years 7 – 12. Students wishing to enrol at Croydon Community School generally have had difficulties in mainstream school settings and for one reason or another need an alternative approach to education. Croydon Community School operates under the Big Picture Education model.

We believe that the school should be reflective of the characteristics of our wider society including such issues:

Cultural diversity
Gender balance
Disabilities/impairments
Range of student learning abilities

Students in Year 6 who indicate a preference to attend Croydon Community School must go through the same process as a normal enrolment. Given enrolments aren’t confirmed until completion of the three-day trial and induction program for new intake students, it is strongly recommended that students also make an enrolment preference with their local secondary school.

Learn More

Compass

Croydon Community School utilises Compass for attendance reporting, classroom planning as well as information and document storing. This system is available to all families.

The Compass system allows families to: