How to find out about your School and information about the area.
Park Hill Public School is located in a low Socio-economic area.
This means that most of the families living here are economically and socially disadvantaged. Economically they are disadvantaged as the average income is less than half than the national figure of Australia. The majority of families live in public housing estates which means housing that is provided and subsidised by government and is part of a broad social housing system that includes community housing, public housing and Aboriginal housing (NSW federation of housing association 2008).
Students from disadvantaged or minority backgrounds lack access to the forms of cultural and social capital necessary to succeed in school (Smyth, 2004). As a result, cultural capital is not “evenly distributed throughout the class structure and this largely accounts for the class differences in educational attainment” (Germov 2000, p207). Families with little social capital to draw on will not have access to available resources. Research indicates that children from low-SES households and communities develop academic skills more slowly compared to children from higher SES groups (Morgan, Farkas, Hillemeier, & Maczuga, 2009). Initial academic skills are correlated with the home environment, where lowliteracy environments and chronic stress negatively affect a child’s pre-academic skills Associating your pedagogy and programme with the broader community and school will help to close the gap in the learning outcomes for their students as they work towards achieving each student’s full potential. This webpage link provides support for low SES school communities and can be used for not only teachers but students and parents. The website has a resource library with some useful and current articles relating to education and Low SES communities.
http://www.lowsesschools.nsw.edu.au/AboutUs.aspx
To find out more about the area of your school, follow these steps;
1) Go to http://www.myschool.edu.au/
2) Type in the schools name or postcode
3) Will give details of previous and current year school comments, school facts, student background including cultural and enrolment details, Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) and NAPLAN results. ICSEA is a measure that compares literacy and nummary achievements from students of that school with students from similar background schools in a fair and meaningful way (ACARA 2012). Australian Bureau of Statistics data used to generate a school’s ICSEA value and the ABS website could be used to find out more about your local school’s area.
www.abs.gov.au
ABS site will allow you to research demographics and education data on schools and geographic locations.
Census Data
http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/D3310114.nsf/home/Census+data
ABS QuickStats
Type in the postcode of your schools area
ABS Map Stats
Select 2006 MapStats
Type in postcode (hit return)
Check the location (postal area) NSW, then click Select Topic
Select topic from the dropdown menu (you can select any of the topics) hit return
Click view MapStats
Atlas of NSW
http://atlas.nsw.gov.au/public/nsw/home/index/2.html
Click ‘start exploring’ (on the right of the page)
On the map, from the menu (upper right) click ‘people’ then ‘social inclusion’
The map is interactive, you can click on an area to see the SEIFA score; SEIFA (Socio Economic Indexes for Areas) is a general measure of relative socio-economic disadvantage that captures more information than income alone
Try toggling the menu in the centre right of the screen and seeing how the map changes (eg.Select ‘children in welfare dependent families’)
References
ACARA 2012, accessed 12/03/2012, www.acara.edu.au
Aikens, N. L., & Barbarin, O. (2008). Socioeconomic differences in reading trajectories: The contribution of family, neighborhood, and school contexts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100, 235-251.
Germov, J (2000) ‘A class above the rest? Education and the reproduction of class’ in J Allen (Eds) Sociology of Education; possibilities and practices, Social Science Press, Katoomba, pp217-232
Morgan, P. L., Farkas, G., Hillemeier, M. M., & Maczuga, S. (2009). Risk factors for learning-related behavior problems at 24 months of age: Population-based estimates. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 37, 401-413.
Smyth, J. (2004) ‘Social capital and the socially just school’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 19-33.
Factsheet; http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/factsheet-education.pdf
This means that most of the families living here are economically and socially disadvantaged. Economically they are disadvantaged as the average income is less than half than the national figure of Australia. The majority of families live in public housing estates which means housing that is provided and subsidised by government and is part of a broad social housing system that includes community housing, public housing and Aboriginal housing (NSW federation of housing association 2008).
Students from disadvantaged or minority backgrounds lack access to the forms of cultural and social capital necessary to succeed in school (Smyth, 2004). As a result, cultural capital is not “evenly distributed throughout the class structure and this largely accounts for the class differences in educational attainment” (Germov 2000, p207). Families with little social capital to draw on will not have access to available resources. Research indicates that children from low-SES households and communities develop academic skills more slowly compared to children from higher SES groups (Morgan, Farkas, Hillemeier, & Maczuga, 2009). Initial academic skills are correlated with the home environment, where lowliteracy environments and chronic stress negatively affect a child’s pre-academic skills Associating your pedagogy and programme with the broader community and school will help to close the gap in the learning outcomes for their students as they work towards achieving each student’s full potential. This webpage link provides support for low SES school communities and can be used for not only teachers but students and parents. The website has a resource library with some useful and current articles relating to education and Low SES communities.
http://www.lowsesschools.nsw.edu.au/AboutUs.aspx
To find out more about the area of your school, follow these steps;
1) Go to http://www.myschool.edu.au/
2) Type in the schools name or postcode
3) Will give details of previous and current year school comments, school facts, student background including cultural and enrolment details, Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) and NAPLAN results. ICSEA is a measure that compares literacy and nummary achievements from students of that school with students from similar background schools in a fair and meaningful way (ACARA 2012). Australian Bureau of Statistics data used to generate a school’s ICSEA value and the ABS website could be used to find out more about your local school’s area.
www.abs.gov.au
ABS site will allow you to research demographics and education data on schools and geographic locations.
Census Data
http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/D3310114.nsf/home/Census+data
ABS QuickStats
Type in the postcode of your schools area
ABS Map Stats
Select 2006 MapStats
Type in postcode (hit return)
Check the location (postal area) NSW, then click Select Topic
Select topic from the dropdown menu (you can select any of the topics) hit return
Click view MapStats
Atlas of NSW
http://atlas.nsw.gov.au/public/nsw/home/index/2.html
Click ‘start exploring’ (on the right of the page)
On the map, from the menu (upper right) click ‘people’ then ‘social inclusion’
The map is interactive, you can click on an area to see the SEIFA score; SEIFA (Socio Economic Indexes for Areas) is a general measure of relative socio-economic disadvantage that captures more information than income alone
Try toggling the menu in the centre right of the screen and seeing how the map changes (eg.Select ‘children in welfare dependent families’)
References
ACARA 2012, accessed 12/03/2012, www.acara.edu.au
Aikens, N. L., & Barbarin, O. (2008). Socioeconomic differences in reading trajectories: The contribution of family, neighborhood, and school contexts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100, 235-251.
Germov, J (2000) ‘A class above the rest? Education and the reproduction of class’ in J Allen (Eds) Sociology of Education; possibilities and practices, Social Science Press, Katoomba, pp217-232
Morgan, P. L., Farkas, G., Hillemeier, M. M., & Maczuga, S. (2009). Risk factors for learning-related behavior problems at 24 months of age: Population-based estimates. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 37, 401-413.
Smyth, J. (2004) ‘Social capital and the socially just school’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 19-33.
Factsheet; http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/factsheet-education.pdf