HSC response to OxYgen draft report

This is a copy of the email sent to Moreland councillors on 14/09/2010 regarding the draft OxYgen Youth report. This report is open for feedback on the Moreland Council website.

Hi Oscar, Alice and all

Congratulations on the OxYgen report which I just had a look at on the net. I note in the report that:

• Youth service providers identified Education as the biggest issue facing Moreland Youth
• Co-location was a highly regarded potential solution to provision of space for youth.
• Disengagement, mental health and the need for resilience are also big issues.

High School for Coburg are working very hard to come up with solution for a big chunk of Moreland youth and I see a lot of duplication in our arguments -the report cites, as HSC does, the benefits to the broader community of getting in early with help for young people. We have come to understand that the most vulnerable group in terms of potential disengement are middle years boys -this is the specific group that are let down by the current secondary school provision scenario in Coburg.

We also understand that while young people need their own spaces, the family-school-community partnership is also crucially important in terms of building resilience and education outcomes.This partnership cannot occur when schools are far away. Contrary to what some on the committee may believe not all in Coburg can get in to Brunswick High and Coburg North is out of what is effectively the enrolment zone for Brunswick High.

One of the solutions we are suggesting is a junior intake at the under utilised Coburg Senior High. While we acknowledge this school is doing some great work with young people - it would be put to wonderful use servicing a broader age range and opening the excellent facilities to more of the community.

One option we are considering is an education Hub however a Youth Hub could also be something to consider in relation to any new secondary school provision that arises in Coburg. We see an opportunity to work in conjunction with the Coburg Initiative ( right in the centre of Moreland ) to increase provision to our youth and to co-locate services with a Coburg High. I am writing to ask if HSC could be invited/involved in any discussions around this issue given that education has been highlighted as the major youth issue.

Kind Regards Cate Hall

Emails to the education department

So we can strengthen our case for a new local secondary school,  HSC asked the Education department for some extra statistics. The email below was sent on 14 October 2009.

Dear Krys and Peter,

Thank you again for your time and attention at the meeting with Christine Campbell MP, Moreland council, Coburg primary and HSC.
I am writing on behalf of HSC to formally request the release of the following documents to HSC .

1) Provision Plan for the Coburg community ( As referred to in Bronwyn Pike MP's letter 26 May 2009, scanned copy available if necessary)
2) Enrolment data for Coburg SLA primary schools, West Preston schools-namely Bell, Newlands and Preston West and Brunswick East primary.
3) Exit data from the same schools showing which high schools the year 6 students have gone to.
4) When completed, the postcode analysis of the schools above which we thank you for agreeing to undertake .

At an earlier meeting with HSC you stated that the onus is on HSC to make the case for a high school for Coburg and as such we require access to the above data.
Information HSC have recently obtained and are able to offer the department in order to assist you in determining local community educational needs includes:

• Catholic primary enrolment data and exit figures for Catholic grade 6 entering state high schools in 2009 West Preston population data.
• Once released -The HSC survey including comprehensive verbatim responses from parents representing 556 children .

We respectfully ask that you please reply within a week acknowledging receipt of this request and that the data above (excluding the post code analysis) be made available by the end of October .

 Kind Regards

Cate Hall
HSC

On the same day we received this reply

Hi Cate

Due to current urgent projects currently being undertaken at the regional and school levels we are not able to provide information to meet your requested timelines.

Will provide when time permits

Peter Enright

On 15 October 2009, we responded as follows...

Hi Peter


Thanks for your quick reply.

I do understand that you must be very busy with the with the re-branding ,stimulus spending etc etc.

In the meantime could we please have the data that is easily accessable and emailable?

By this I mean:

Exit data showing which high schools year 6 are going to in 2010 for Coburg SLA, West Preston and Brunswick East. Krys said this data would be ready for the HSC/dept. meeting 17 Aug but we didn't get around to discussing it as the main topics ended up being enrolments and population data.

Primary school enrolment data and projections for Coburg SLA plus West Preston and Brunswick East. These I presume are also easy to email as they appeared to be on a printout at our last two meetings

You may not have this data for the Bell and Preston West primaries yet but you do have the other West Preston school -Newlands.

So we will gladly take what you have at this stage.

Thanks again.

Regards
Cate Hall

Councillor Update from High School for Coburg

This is the text of an email sent by Catherine Hall to the Moreland Council on 23/08/09

Dear Mayor and councillors,

Thank you to councillors John Kavanagh, Toby Archer and Kathleen Mathews-Ward and to Barry Hahn for attending HSC Q&A on 19 Aug. Special thanks to Cr.Oscar Yildez for being a panelist on the night. Apologies if we missed any other councillors.

On being informed councillors are to have a meeting with Wayne Craig from the education department Northern Region we thought it best to give you a quick update.

Families supporting HSC 1,250

1)NUMBERS DISCREPANCY BETWEEN MORELAND COUNCIL AND ED. DEPT.
High School for Coburg (HSC) have had two meetings with the department to date. At the July one with Kyrs Hendrickson and Peter Enright it soon became apparent that their numbers were very different to council's projections. ID who did council's, predict the only significant growth in youth demographic is going to occur in Coburg, which already has the greatest number of young people in Moreland. The department's demographers say the growth is going to be in the north of Moreland and don't predict anywhere near the same growth. HSC directed them to Robyn Mitchell, council research officer to verify the numbers we are using and they agreed to meet us again and review the discrepancy. When we met with them on 17 Aug we reiterated that ID have the best record for projecting accurately compared with ABS and DSE and are the only company that comes to council to do local research for their projections. The department response was to say that ID come and see what council want and gear the results that way because they want the work.

Apart from being a slur on ID and indirectly, the council this is a flawed supposition because why would council want inflated projections? This would entail expensive preparation for provision of services that aren't required. Also it doesn't explain the excellent record ID have for accuracy and the fact that 95% of councils use them.Example of projections done by the dept demographers: Moreland population will increase by 4,000 by 2031.This is patently extremely underestimated because there are 16,000 new homes estimated to be built in that time.

We say the numbers are here in the Coburg area now and even more so into the future.

2) EMPTY SEATS AT FAR AWAY SCHOOLS
HSC applauds work being done at Box Forest and Fawkner high schools to increase profile and enrolments and this should help enrich those communities however indicating that there are spaces at those far away schools is not a blow to the campaign for a high school for this community. I imagine there are also plenty of spaces at the Coburg Senior High site.

3) BRUNSWICK VERSUS COBURG??
There has been an idea put forward from a certain political quarter that the HSC campaign will work against Brunswick high school's submission for funding to enable 150 extra places.We do not wish to get into an either/or scenario but if forced into that corner, I will make a very big noise about the numbers for high school aged young people below:

12 -17 year olds in 2006 /2016 /2031.

The 2006 number is indisputable ABS, the next two are ID forecast projections.

Brunswick 739 / 807 / 883
Coburg 1,509 / 1,795 / 2,020

4) PRESTON WEST PRIMARY
This school is very big, has just decided they want to cap preps at 100 and the school council has voted in support of HSC. The department do not include it in their calculations but it is part of this community needing a high school. Coburg West Primary, which is beyond capacity, capped and zoned is the most represented school in HSC working party and furnished us with 100's of supporters at their fete. Brunswick East Primary parents are also big supporters and Carlo Carli has said that the increases in Brunswick primary enrolments are mainly Coburg families.

This is to illustrate to you the large area we represent which contains families considering moving away because their community has no high school. We will be able to show you evidence of that once our survey has been input and analysed and we thank council for assisting with that process.

Kind Regards and apologies for lengthy email,
Catherine Hall
HSC