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Enrolling only 100 students, Giant Steps’ Sydney may be small in size, but the dedication displayed by its staff is immense.
Established in 1995, the school is now recognised as a leading education centre including a range of integral services to meet the needs of its students from 3-18 years.
On 17 August at the inaugural Australian Education Awards, Giant Steps Sydney was awarded the Special Education School of the Year.
“We work really hard with our families, who come from all over Sydney to attend our school,” Jenny Loughnan, Giant Steps’ head of early learning, told The Educator.
At the school, a team of teachers and therapists draw on their expertise to provide an innovative and individualised education and therapy program for each student. These programs are based on the NSW Curriculum and incorporate all of the key learning areas.
Kerrie Nelson, Giant Steps’ principal and national director of schools and colleges, said the school’s programs are differentiated for each child within the context of the class program.
“With the combined knowledge from both teachers and therapists, staff develop, implement and assess programs. Staff find ‘the edge of learning’ for each child and build programs from there,” Nelson told The Educator.
“The school takes engagement data on each child every 30 minutes during the day so that we can continually adjust programs as we work towards active engagement in all areas of school life.”
Nelson said Giant Steps also provides evidence based and best practice training to other agencies and community groups.
“The area commonly requested for professional learning is: “what do we do about student behaviour?” Nelson said.
She said Giant Steps have reframed the question about student behaviour by asking the question: “Why do students disengage from the teaching and learning activities?”
“By reframing the problem and using data gathered, participants in training programs have often commented that they feel more able to tease out the issues and begin to shift their practice by actively solving problems and being proactive in the classroom,” she said.