Miallo State School: differentiation and inclusivity

The QTU was proud to sponsor the QTU Bevan Brennan “Every Child Needs a Champion: Realising the potential for every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student” category at this year’s Showcase Awards. Here principal Anet Ridley explains how joint winner Miallo State School addresses students’ complex and diverse learning and social-emotional needs.

Miallo State School is a medium-sized school of just under 200 students, located on the lands of the Kuku Yalanji people in Far North Queensland, approximately 1.5 hours drive north of Cairns. 

As a high performing school in terms of academic data, we focussed heavily on quality teaching and already had a number of systems and programs in place to challenge and extend our high-performing students. However, our student body has become increasingly diverse over recent years, and we support students with a range of diverse and often complex needs, whether they have a diagnosed or imputed disability or require social-emotional or other support. 

We believe that diversity adds value to our school and an existing school culture of inclusion and high expectations laid the foundation for our focus on differentiation.

We are a family-orientated school that values strong relationships: getting to know families and the student’s story is important if we are to provide tailored adjustments targeted to meet their individual needs. We have learned to be agile in our response and learn with every new student that enrols. We address student needs through a range of differentiated systems, programs, and practices within tiered support. This sees complex case management, flexible grouping, adjusting the physical environment and the provision of individualised programs. We have a strong student support team and building the capability of this team and all staff is an ongoing imperative. 

Success is measured through both academic and social outcomes, with both quantitative and qualitative data valued. Analysis and discussion of disaggregated data allows us to focus on the specific learning outcomes that need to be targeted. A range of data, including school assessments and monitoring tools, A-C data, individual student goals and tracking on the personal and social capability continua for some students is analysed for next steps. 

We unpack a student’s summative assessment to break down the skills or knowledge they are missing, develop learning sprints and SMART goals to inform explicit instruction and intervention.

What would our advice to other schools be? Start with your moral imperative of what you believe students deserve. For us, it was that they should have every opportunity to be successful and happy, whatever that looks like for them. Identify and address the barriers and put systems in place to respond to those and design systems to record them. Be strategic with your provision of human and physical resources as you build an expert student support and teaching team. Don’t be afraid to reach out to other schools and regional support staff.

Professionally, the Showcase recognition has been an opportunity to lift our heads from day-to-day school life and leave the trenches for a moment to reflect on the excellent work that we do every day. The award belongs to every staff member as this work is in all classrooms, all day, every day.