Port Phillip Specialist School provides specialised education for students with an intellectual disability with a full-Scale IQ within the range of 70 and below. We are delighted to accept enrolments from families seeking a supportive and inclusive learning environment for their children.
Our school has developed an innovative response to supporting the needs of our special students. This is our Visual and Performing Arts Curriculum or VPAC.
Integrated services ensures that each students program is reviewed by a team of Special Educators, Therapists, Psychologist, and Social Worker. The review is to ensure that each student’s needs are being met and to ensure that the best outcomes are being achieved for each student. The use of Visual and Performing Arts is a child-centred approach where our teachers and therapists use the power of concrete experiences delivered through arts (visual and performing), dance, drama, music, physical education, and technology as a way to immerse our students in a deeply engaging learning environment. This approach enables us to more readily achieve English literacy, numeracy, and living skills goals.
The individual needs of our students have informed the construction and development of VPAC and this curriculum model is, we believe, highly congruent with the spirit of the Victorian Essential Learning Standards.
As well as class room teachers and specialist teachers in Art, Drama, Music, PE and Swimming our school has a range of therapists on staff to support our students in their programs. The therapists include Art Therapy, Drama Therapy, Music Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech Pathology and Physiotherapy.
These staff work together to deliver services in line with what is known as an Integrated Service delivery model. This is a powerful way to address the highly individualised needs of our students.