PRINCIPALS WELCOME
Welcome to Yarrabah School's Website!
We hope you enjoy navigating our site and find the information within both useful and educational.
Yarrabah School is situated in Melbourne's bayside suburb of Aspendale. We cater for children aged between 2.8 and 18 years with an intellectual disability.
Our purpose is to provide a nurturing, educational environment that maximises each students potential. Our mission is to maximise student potential by providing an individualised, safe learning environment that promotes active learning, encourages adventure, independence, and self-esteem. The school ensures that all students have access to the curriculum and support services in preparation for life after school as valued community members.
Our philosophy is REAL: Relationships, Explicitness, Ability, and Learning for Life are the four pillars of the Yarrabah Framework, aligning closely with FISO 2.0.
Yarrabah School prides itself on offering relevant and valuable communications to assist our community in navigating these challenging times. We aim to provide opportunities to be 'Interconnected' by maintaining positive relationships with students, families, staff, our community and the environment.
We provide families with helpful advice, community resources, and school information promptly across dedicated platforms. Seesaw is our main communication tool between home and school, posting regular updates about daily activities and their relationships with learning and development. We also use Seesaw for whole-school communications. Compass is used as a platform for posting information related to excursions, school permissions, health, school reports, booking meetings and reading IEPs.
Yarrabah School places great emphasis on improving student learning outcomes. Our homeroom teachers deliver a differentiated and scaffolded curriculum according to the school's yearly curriculum map. To ensure homeroom teachers can remain focused on the core curriculum for students of all abilities, we also employ subject specialist teachers. These specialists deliver a very engaging curriculum across primary and secondary years in science, the visual arts, music, drama, horticulture, health, and physical education.
Yarrabah is renowned for its mental health and well-being services. Our new strategic plan (2022-2026) highlights the importance of providing a systematic and integrated service team (IST) approach that supports students throughout their entire school experience. An IST approach provides each student and their family with the supports they need, when they need it, along with the therapy services to enable all students access to the curriculum in a safe and supported way. Our IST approach provides universal and tiered support in a structured and data-informed manner within Student Engagement Services, Mental Health and Wellbeing Services and Therapy Services.
My staff and I are always available to listen and answer your enquiries to the best of our ability. With only 190 school-aged students and 60 part-time Early Education Program children, we are your small school with a big heart.
Kindest regards,
Matthew Harris
Principal