Preston Primary School

In November 2002 Preston Primary was looking for ways to address welfare issues. It was responding to two different prompts: one was feedback from parents indicating they were keen for the school to develop an arts and cultural program; the second was our disappointment at missing out on government funding for welfare.

We came up with the proactive idea of addressing the welfare issue through an Arts Program. The idea fitted beautifully with the Preston belief that effective solutions are curriculum based. Children must be numerate and literate – at or above the state benchmarks as a minimum – if they are to be provided with the skills to realise personal social justice.

The initial idea was to train our teachers to deliver the Arts Program to the students. Lana Strogonow, our Guidance Officer, alerted us to an initiative being run by the Festival for Healthy Living. Lana, in conjunction with Janet Paterson, our Assistant Principal, organised for our whole staff to attend a professional development day. Forty of us were involved. We juggled, drummed, formed pyramids, danced and performed circus acts. It was challenging and great fun.

The staff had a mighty time. For morale and team building it was magnificent. We were sure it would be as good for our students as it was for us. In 2003 we participated in a Festival for Healthy Living program along with Reservoir Primary School, and Lakeside Secondary College.

Importantly, we realised that if our Arts journey was to be successful in an ongoing way, we needed to bring in talented experts – artists – on a regular basis. Our staff role would be to support, with passion and energy, the Arts Program. School Council and the Parents Club embraced the idea. They agreed to use hard earned, locally raised funds and give the program a chance to work. They agreed to provide as much as they could.

From the beginning of the 2004 school year we employed, on a sessional basis, performers who could dance, perform circus acts, do puppetry and sing. These were people we had worked with at the Festival for Healthy Living workshop. The dancer was a parent, and the three others were artists from our Festival for Healthy Living experience.

We expected it to be successful. We changed our timetable. We are a Maths and English school, and to preserve the fifteen hours allocated to those areas was a priority. We allocated significant timetable space so that the Grade 4, 5 and 6 classes were saturated in the Arts Program, to enjoy the best of both worlds. On a rotating basis the children were puppeteers, or circus performers or dancers or singers. After the first ten weeks we were at the Preston Town Hall.

Was it a concert? No. It was more of a celebration of new learning. It was creative, rigorous and emotional. Our artists had woken a sleeping giant of talent. It was an event that made one gasp in awe.

Since our involvement in the Festival we don’t have concerts that cost $10.00 a ticket. During the year children display their new skills at school events. We think this emphasises the Arts Program as part of the school’s everyday fabric, and not as a one-off special event.

What have been the benefits of the Festival beyond feeling warm and fuzzy? Our first target was to reduce our absence rates. Our school’s average absence rate has dropped to single figures. The second target was to improve the results on the Grade 5 and 6 Attitude to School Surveys. The results place us in the 75% plus percentile. Our children perform above the state expectations on AIM. As a ‘Like School’ Group 8, our mean scores are higher than those of Like School Group 1 schools.

Further, the school benefited from the experience of the Festival for Healthy Living by ringing a bell to be positive about student welfare, and to find solutions in curriculum. In other words finding answers in the area of our expertise.

The Festival for Healthy Living inspired Arts Program is still run on a shoestring, and is funded locally. The funds are not in the Global Budget. In this data driven age we have the numbers, but we don’t do it for the numbers. We have an Arts Program we love. It’s rigorous and lots of fun. Our involvement in the Festival for Healthy Living program showed us a way to improve the schooling for our community. Children from Prep to Grade 6 at Preston Primary receive a more balanced curriculum as a result of the input from the school’s involvement in the Festival for Healthy Living experience.

John Nelson,

Principal

Preston Primary School

Last Updated 29-Sep-2009. Authorised by: Pam Marland. Enquiries: Harry Gelber.