Page 353 - Week 01 - Thursday, 14 February 2019
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their neighbourhood being defined by a school’s Priority Enrolment Area (PEA). This guarantee applies regardless of when a student applies for enrolment. This guarantee is fundamental to the equity of the government school system, as no child should have to compete for a place in school.
As has been long standing policy, if a school has capacity after enrolling students from its PEA, it may consider offering enrolment to ACT students who live outside the PEA (also known as “out of area” enrolments). Schools should establish an enrolment limit at a level less than 100 percent of capacity utilisation to ensure there is always capacity available for ongoing enrolment from within their PEA, at any time in the year, for example, if a family newly moves to Canberra or into their area. In addition, the Directorate’s aim is that over the longer term, a school’s capacity utilisation is less than 100 percent so as to enable flexible use of learning spaces to suit curriculum needs.
Due to high demand within their PEAs, both Lyneham High School and Canberra High Schools were required to limit out of area enrolments for year 7 in 2019 with Lyneham High School being limited to a very small number of students into the LEAP program.
The Directorate has a number of exception categories for out of area enrolments which are detailed on the Directorate’s website
https://www.education.act.gov.au/school_education/enrolling_in_an_act_public_school/parent-guide/accepting-an-offer-of-enrolmenttransfer. They include:
• siblings of concurrently attending (ie in 2019) students
• non-PEA students on clear wellbeing grounds; or
• agreed, capped specialist programs with defined eligibility criteria.
Wellbeing
The elements of student wellbeing include:
1. legal considerations;
2. social and economic vulnerability;
3. mental health including psychological factors; or
4. students that may be considered at risk for other factors.
Specialist programs
The ACT government school system is based on equity. As such, there are a range of “special” programs which are available universally across ACT public schools, such as Tier Two Continuum of Education or (per existing policy) Gifted and Talented programs. These universally available approaches across schools are not considered as ‘defined specialist programs’.
A small number of schools deliver defined “specialist” programs agreed with the Education Support Office of the Directorate. For the purposes of the selection of non-PEA enrolments, these programs have an agreed maximum capacity with defined and objective selection processes. These programs have a cap on the maximum number of
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