School boosts attendance by introducing cafe and food truck program to re-engage students
Daniel was studying at a mainstream school where he said he felt isolated and lacked support for his learning needs after being diagnosed with autism.
"It was a struggle going to school every day to be honest," Daniel said.
He said on many days he would leave school early, struggling to cope with bullying and a demanding workload.
"I didn't want to go to school but I had to kind of put up with it because at the same time I really wanted to learn things.
"I couldn't go outside at recess and lunch times because the bullying was so bad and [the school] ended up ... giving me a reduced timetable."
In year 8 Daniel moved to MacKillop Education in Geelong — a school catered to children who are disengaged or at risk of disengaging from education.
The 18-year-old will graduate from year 12 this year — a feat he said was only made possible with the school's support and flexible learning options.
One such program is the school's Bitter Sweet Café — an initiative that bloomed from a VCAL subject and has now expanded into a food truck that services the school and the local community.
It is a classroom on wheels that the school offers as an alternative method to learning literacy and numeracy skills through completing a certified industry course.
"I've learnt how to make coffees, I interact with people, so my people skills have improved," Daniel said.
"When I'm not in the food truck, I'm in the kitchen learning how to make sandwiches, how to make wraps, and there's so many things that I've learnt — measurements and recipes."
It is one strategy being used to tackle school refusal which has been on the rise across Victoria over the last decade, according to data from the National Report on Schooling in Australia.
Last year Victoria's attendance rate was 88.6 per cent, almost one per cent below the 2023 rate, and almost 5 per cent below the rate in 2014.
School attendance levels, which determine the percentage of students with attendance at or above 90 per cent, has dropped even further.
Victoria's school attendance level was at 59.7 per cent last year, almost 20 per cent lower than the level in 2015.
MacKillop Education principal Skye Staude said implementing more innovative programs like the cafe and food truck helped to incite excitement around attending school while providing life skills that would help students transition out of senior school.
"The attendance rates at our school were quite low for that particular senior program," Ms Staude said.
"We saw instantly when [the cafe and food truck] became a part of that program, attendance rose, and we saw students' confidence in themselves, and their self-worth also improve."
Ms Staude said students were more engaged in the program because they were embedded in the decision-making process including logo design, branding and the kitchen design within the truck.
With only 80 places available at MacKillop Education's Geelong campus and a growing demand for flexible learning, the waitlist is currently at about 90 students.
The school has smaller classes with one educator supporting students throughout the entire day.
"That certainly helps them when they're transitioning here because their needs are very complex, they're experiencing learning difficulties, often social and emotional challenges," Ms Staude said.
"There needs to be more schools that are set up that can be catering to the needs of young people who are experiencing these stressors."
Ms Staude stressed that the language around school refusal needed to change as it insinuated that students were not wanting or were too lazy to go to school.
"School refusal is implying that the young person is making a choice and a considered choice to say I'm refusing school," she said.
"But it's an experience of significant distress that a young person is experiencing in their body for whatever reason that may be, and there's no choice in that.
Deakin University psychology associate professor Glenn Melvin said more research was needed to analyse the circumstances of the children and families experiencing attendance challenges.
He said low attendance impacted the individual as well as the wider community.
"We know how protective finishing your education is, we see the social impacts of not finishing school, we see health, mental health outcomes," associate professor Melvin said.
"Not to mention the financial and economic implications of not finishing your schooling."
Associate professor Melvin said better training was needed for school staff to be inclusive of all learners, as well as more effective communication between school staff and parents.
A Victorian government education inquiry last year found there were 201 locations offering flexible learning options in the state but that they were not regulated or resourced well.
The inquiry's report recommended the Department of Education to work with principals to determine appropriate funding levels, whether regulations were needed to support the sector, and ways to increase community awareness of flexible learning options.
"We need a range of options for all our students — there's more that we can do within mainstream schools to make them … more able to respond to the needs of a wide range of learners," associate professor Melvin said.
"At the same time I think we need specialist flexible learning type programs that are going to suit the needs of students that aren't finding a great deal of success in mainstream schools."
Associate professor Melvin said flexible learning was important but there was a current gap in the programs available to students whose drop in attendance was in the early stages.
"Certainly we need dedicated services that are able to respond to the needs of students with very low attendance," he said.
"But we don't want to wait until their attendance is in really dire shape, we want to, as much as possible, get in early.
"We know that the longer kids are out of their education, the harder it is for them to get back in and resume their learning."
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