Sixth Observation - Glen Eira College

The sixth school that we visited was Glen Eira English Language Centre. Like Blackburn, this school does provide new immigrants the change to brush their English Language for 20 weeks and then sent to mainstream secondary schools. In contrast, the school provides students to have the experience of what a typical Australian school is before going to a mainstream school. Facilities such as a large playground was included and a chance to study at the school after the 20 weeks of ‘training’. In addition, the school does provide students that are overage to go to a TAFE course upon the 20 weeks completion. The school also provides international secondary school students from other languages to take the English course at the school.

In class, the students were set into small class sizes and studies of different subjects were taught in order to widen their knowledge of Australian contexts. The teachers told us that they have to prepare their own materials and implemented free teaching as long as they are up the Victorian Education Learning Standard (VELS). Teachers in the college would give students more time to think about on what they are doing rather than giving those tasks that could be a serious challenge. Code switching could be used depending on situations. The teacher told us that they do encounter some culture issues and gender issues. There are also at times that the boys and girls could simply not work together and things were not going to their plan but they had to face the fact, hoping that the situation could change when time carries on.

There is one thing that is interesting that is that students at the school do not need to have any exams to get into the desirable school. All they need to do is to work hard and hopefully, be accepted into their desirable school. There is also a rule that schools are not allowed to decline any student under 18, in which their area of location of residency is closest to the specific school.

To conclude, I have seen two classes during the time there. The first one was useful as there are some challenges faced by the teacher and how she prepared the materials for her students taking Social studies. The second class was more or less similar to the ones at Blackburn and I think it would have been better if they had shown some speciality/strongest courses for us to observe.