Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Thursday, 22 May, Senator Scott Ryan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education and I visited Emerald Secondary College in my electorate of La Trobe. We were met by the principal, Mr Wayne Burgess, who has been with the school for over 12 years and is doing a fantastic job. Emerald Secondary College has 850 students, the majority of whom travel to school by bus from nearby towns such as Cockatoo, Gembrook, Macclesfield and Menzies Creek.

One of the areas that Emerald Secondary College is renowned for is its integration program. They welcome students with disabilities and for this reason it has been seen as the school of choice in the Dandenong Ranges. They have a huge number of students with both diagnosed and undiagnosed learning difficulties who, despite intensive literacy and learning programs over their entire school life, continue to have significant difficulties both academically and socially.

One of the teachers at the school, Ms Kylie Rackham has taken a great interest in brain science and how this can be applied in education. Kylie's son experienced some learning difficulties and she worked with the Listen and Learn Centre on improving his auditory processing and working memory. She noticed a definite improvement and began to think about how these approaches could be applied in a school setting. The school's Brain and Auditory Training program, or BAT program, is a direct result of Kylie's initiative and is based on strengthening the neural pathways that are so crucial in the learning process.

The BAT program uses an innovative approach to improving learning outcomes for the integrated students. It is based on addressing difficulties understanding speech in background noise. These difficulties can manifest themselves in a variety of ways—including, poor listening attention, poor reading and spelling, and poor communication skills. The BAT program uses electronically modified music and language to stimulate the auditory pathways and enhance auditory neural plasticity to assist and improve the student's auditory processing abilities. The auditory training enhances the ability of auditory systems to differentiate between fine differences in frequency and other auditory skills.

Students spend their BAT sessions with headphones on, doing a variety of literacy, numeracy and development movement activities. Students also have to read into a microphone; be read to; do comprehension exercises; practice tongue twisters; do eye-tracking exercises; and do cross-patterning and 'brain gym' type activities.

One of the students I met was Emily Spiers, a year 10 student. She could not speak more highly of this program. She has been a great beneficiary. I also spoke to Ms Colleen Appleby, the assistant teacher running the BAT program, and she again praised this program and how good it has been for the school.

I congratulate Wayne Burgess and Kylie Rackham for ensuring that this initiative is now part of the Emerald Secondary College program.