river nile school and river nile learning centre (chair)

We empower young refugee and asylum seeker women through education, to acquire the language, life and work skills to integrate and thrive in our community. At the River Nile School (RNS) we change students’ lives through an individual approach to learning, using specialist EAL (English as an Additional Language), real life, applied-learning pedagogy. Our small, highly skilled professional team take on a true mentoring approach, walking alongside and supporting the individual journey of our students, developing their confidence as learners, supporting them to resolve the complex challenges and trauma ever present in their lives and building healthy and respectful relationships which strengthen their engagement and outcomes. Each student is supported to develop a career pathway plan, specific to their aspirations and goals, and once they complete their secondary education, supported to realise this plan as they transition from our school. The River Nile School delivers VCAA (Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority) approved VCAL (Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning) curriculum to Year 11 and 12 students. The RNS Learning Program is based on the eight learning areas – English, Mathematics, Sciences, Humanities, The Arts, Health and Physical Education, Information and Communication Technology and Design and Technology. The Program aligns with a whole school approach to curriculum and is organised and designed to run over the course of two years. All programs and services are free, as our students are among the most disadvantaged in the community and unable to contribute to the costs of their education.. Unique aspects of our service include: • Childcare for students who are young mums • Welfare support to resolve complex personal issues for students • Individualised learning and support RNS is an ACNC registered Charitable organisation, endorsed by the ATO for charity tax concessions and as a Deductible Gift Recipients (DGR). BACKGROUND RNS grew out of the River Nile Learning Centre (RNLC), which was established in 2006 to assist the African refugee community. It commenced with after-hours tutorials in a hall in Footscray, and from those small beginnings grew substantially to meet the education needs of other disadvantaged members of our community. River Nile has a 12-year track record of delivering an award-winning, student outcome-centred, professional quality education model, including VCAL, to re-engage young refugee and asylum seeker women who have disengaged or cannot cope in mainstream school. From 2008 to 2016, our VCAL program was delivered through a DET Partnership via a Memorandum of Understanding with Mount Alexander College, however a key challenge was that this only covered 1.7 FTE VCAL teachers’ salaries and never contributed to core operating costs. The opportunity to address this challenge by becoming an Independent School, so it could become self sufficient in covering core operating costs, to enable it to continue to meet the steady demand for its quality multicultural education service was identified, developed and led by the RNLC Director and now RNS Foundation Principal, Lisa Wilson and Secretary and Treasurer and now Welfare Director, John O’Shea, supported by our teaching team and Board. Our goal was realized in December 2016 when the VRQA (Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority) granted registration of the River Nile School Inc as a senior secondary, specialist, single sex (girls only) school with VCAA (Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority) approval to deliver Foundation, Intermediate and Senior VCAL curriculum. With our approval to become a school, the entity changed its name to the River Nile School (RNS). RNS had its first year operating as a registered, independent school in 2017.