From left: Hampton Park Secondary College school council president Jillian Aquilina, principal John Pech, and school captains Natasha and Naerelle watch on as Minister for Finance, Tourism, and Information and Communications Technology Tim Holding officially opens its Flexible Learning Centre last month. Picture: Stewart Chambers.By Marc McGowan
HAMPTON Park Secondary College officially opened its Flexible Learning Centre (FLC) for its year seven and eight students last month.
The aim of the centre is to create a dynamic support network by which teachers can work together and learn from one another to enhance their teaching methods and techniques.
The school believes this will lead to student learning outcomes improving and students taking ownership of their individual progress.
The project cost in excess of $500,000 and the expenditure was part of the $1.5 million grant Hampton Park Secondary College received from the Leading Schools’ Fund, which is a State Government initiative.
The facility incorporates 10 portable classrooms to create a large, open and flexible learning space.
There are approximately 260 students in the centre at any one time – split between years seven and eight – and 16 teachers, two of which are team leaders.
The value of the centre is that students can be broken into different groups to focus on specific needs, which can be taught by the teacher or teachers with those particular strengths.
The subjects that will be conducted in the centre include English, mathematics, humanities, information and communications technology, and personal development.
Hampton Park Secondary College principal John Pech explained that the centre was a way of fast-tracking improved results in the classroom.
“We could see from our student results that whilst there was slow improvement from year to year it just wasn’t dramatic or significant enough,” he said.
“In order to make a significant change we had to do something significantly different or we’d just stay where we were.”
The school researched educational institutions in South Australia and Western Australia, as well as other Victorian establishments, to garner information on cutting-edge teaching methods that have been used to develop the FLC model.
“This set-up allows there to be a focus on building learning relationships between teachers and students … and gives students the opportunity to work in the same setting for half of their learning week,” Mr Pech said.
“Research indicates that if that relationship setting is in place then student learning and engagement and, ultimately, results improve.”
