Full Profile of School

St Patrick’s is a small Catholic school of 140 pupils in the rural town of Koroit in South-western Victoria. There are 22-24 pupils in each classroom. Pupils wear a summer uniform, with hat, for terms one and four. Terms two and three they wear a winter! uniform. The town is noted for its Irish heritage and agricultural background. The school has a principal, six full-time teachers, 6 part-time teachers, two full-time and two part-time integration aides (SNAs) a part-time caretaker and a full-time business manager/secretary.

School starts at 9.00 and continues until 3.30 for all classes including Infants but these do not have any school on Wednesdays of the first term. Classes go from Prep to Grade six. Therefore, pupils start a year older than in Ireland. Recess is from 11.00 to 11.30 and lunch is from 1.00 to 2.00. This means a lot more yard duty which also includes 30 mins before school starts and 10 mins after school finishes. Teachers are mandated three hours a week for meetings be they staff meetings or curricular (usually literacy and numeracy).There are four terms in the school year of at least ten weeks. Teachers work 200 days a year but not all of these are pupil days. There are four pupil-free days at the beginning of the school year (three for literacy interviews and one for prep) and three at the end of the school year for numeracy interviews. There can be a number of other pupil-free days during the year, for example in May we have an in-service course in Religious Education (R.E.) The school years runs from January to December.

Teachers get 2.5 hours a week free to do their preparation and their classes are covered by a specialist teacher: visual arts, music, performing arts or muggins. Classes are called grades and grades three to six have LOTE (Language other than English) for an hour a week. This is more prep time for those teachers. Despite all this, teachers here work very long hours. I generally get to school at eight in the mornings and have never once been first in! Most teachers are in school until five o’ clock and they drift home between five and six. I have even met teachers in the school on a Sunday. Post holders (POLs) get the equivalent of a day a term paid substitute cover for this responsibility or approx an hour a week to plan for their responsibility. We have three POLs and they also get paid substitute cover to attend professional development (P.D.) P.D. is huge due here and is very well funded. Paid substitute cover is provided for teachers who attend. To date teachers here have gone on a grand total of 23 PD days with full substitute cover. This is almost two days a week average. The principal gets paid sub cover for 20 days a year for PD and meetings. This is separate to my release time which is three and two third days a week.

We are in the Diocese of Ballarat and there are approx. sixty primary schools in the Diocese. These are supported by a plethora of support staff in the Catholic Education Office (C.E.O.) consisting of consultants, advisers, accountants, RE advisers, facilitators, executives etc. numbering about sixty. Eileen Flynn eat your heart out! The level of support is unimaginable to the Irish teacher/principal and merits further description.