Our Vision

Children and young people in Hume have access to educational opportunities that nurture and guide them to achieve their full potential, irrespective of their level of disadvantage.

Our Vision: Children and young people in Hume have access to educational opportunities that nurture and guide them to achieve their full potential, irrespective of their level of disadvantage. NCESE partner schools learn and work together, collaborating with families and community agencies, creating a community of mutual support.

Why does the NCESE exist

The NCESE strongly advocates for support for our schools in Broadmeadows, and Hume more generally.

Broadmeadows has long been among the most disadvantaged suburbs in Victoria (e.g. 14.9% unemployment according to the June 2024 Small Labour Area Market report), and Broadmeadows/Jacana consistently yields school performance data that is well below average, including AEDC data indicating that students in their first year of primary school are generally at twice the level of educational vulnerability than students on average in both Victoria, and Australia more generally. Similarly NAPLAN performance is consistently significantly lower than the state and national averages for metropolitan regions.

At the street level, this results in hundreds of children and young people missing out on their fundamental right to an education either by way of prolonged absences from school, suspensions, expulsions or in the form of passive disengagement. While this trend was already manifesting before 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated it, leading to higher levels of disengagement at an earlier age.

Key issues for our schools include student health, wellbeing and welfare; high numbers of students who manifest Tier 3 behaviours, and consequently, the potential for high staff stress and turnover. Project REAL is a Flexible Learning Option that was established by BGCS in 2017, following discussions and advocacy from our local schools. Whilst highly successful, the Project REAL leadership quickly realised the importance of helping schools to build their own staff confidence and capability of working with students who manifest Tier 3 behaviours. This led to the establishment of the NCESE and the research that underpins our key tool for student engagement, our NCESE Building Blocks.

Core NCESE Objective

To collaboratively build the collective capacity of local schools and partner agencies to cater
for the engagement needs of all students – and particularly those students who are at high
risk of disengagement and school exclusion, and who may have a history of complex trauma.

About the NCESE

The Northern Centre for Excellence in School Engagement (NCESE) is a formal collective aimed at building capacity to develop and implement school and community programs that support school engagement for all, including (and especially) our most vulnerable students.

The NCESE was established in 2020, as a formal collaborative network of 16 primary schools, one secondary school, the Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET), and Banksia Gardens Community Services (BGCS) – which acts as the NCESE ‘backbone’ organisation.

The NCESE includes Project REAL – a small, flexible-learning school run by BGCS for locally referred students with complex needs and significant barriers to learning. Project REAL has been in operation since 2017, and works closely with our NCESE partner schools to provide coaching and in-house support to assist schools with Tier 3 students.

Background & Context

The Broadmeadows area is ranked the fourth most disadvantaged in Victoria, and the broader city of Hume ranks in the top decile for disadvantage in Australia (ABS, 2016).

School principals in the Broadmeadows area have noted:

High levels of students with complex needs who manifest inconsistent attendance, poor emotion regulation skills and high levels of significant behavioural incidents;
Impacts on staff stress, wellbeing, morale and ‘reactivity’; and
The expressed need for a consolidated local community response to school disengagement.

Partner Schools

NCESE is a collective place-based initiative, deeply committed to a particular type of reflective practice that embeds learning in collaboration. While it is led by BGCS and supported by many other community organisations, our 15 partner schools are the centre of our focus, because we know that by supporting them we are contributing to a better educational experience for thousands of students.