Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
The speaker works with students with various disabilities, including cognitive, sensory, social, and emotional disabilities, as well as Indigenous students. The majority of these students come from low socioeconomic backgrounds, with 40% living below the poverty line. This poverty often leads to trauma, which impacts their education. The speaker believes that the value for education is not instilled in these students, leading to declining literacy and numeracy levels. The speaker also criticizes the NAPLAN testing system for not providing equity for students with disabilities or those living in poverty and trauma. While there has been progress in adapting curriculum to meet students' needs, it is slow, and the current curriculum does not reflect diversity or allow for reflection. So I work predominantly with students with disability and this can be all types of disability, cognitive, sensory, social, emotional and my job portfolio includes our Indigenous students as well. Our ICSIA is composed of about 70% of students in the lowest socioeconomic bracket and 40% of our students live below the poverty line and when you're living in poverty you're living in automatic trauma so I guess I see the link where families are in poorer areas or don't have a lot of income or resources, the literacy and numeracy levels are declining in our students because the value for education isn't there, they're not being brought up as that value. When it comes to curriculum and testing, NAPLAN doesn't provide any equity for our kids with disability or for our kids living in poverty and trauma. I guess as a society, as we become more accepting and aware of neurodiversity, schools are having to adapt curriculum to get something meaningful from it and I think that there has been progress since I began my new role. It's more widely accepted to adapt your teaching to fit your students and their needs but the progress is incremental. Our curriculum doesn't really reflect diversity and create room for reflection unfortunately.
