Education Queensland to axe travelling school for show children

While the loss of frontline and health services in the Queensland budget has made the headlines in mainstream news, arts and education services have also been cut.

Tuesday's budget slashed arts grants by $12.4 million with the Queensland Art Gallery and Queensland Museum's budget cut by $2.2 million. As a result, the institution is is expected to shed 25 staff positions as a result.

Another budget casualty has been the Queensland School for Travelling Show Children (QSTSC), an Education Queensland backed primary school that provides continuous schooling opportunities for families that move with the show circuits across the eastern states of Australia.

Based in the Brisbane suburb of Coorparoo, QSTSC has a number of mobile classrooms that move with the show families, offering quality learning opportunities through attendance at the mobile classrooms as well as via online and phone lessons.

Since August 2000, the school has provided 'anywhere, anytime' learning, taking a flexible and dynamic approach to teaching and learning.

The program will now cease operations as of the beginning of 2013 with Education Queensland Deputy Director-General Lyn McKenzie explaining "due to financial constraints, the department must now focus on frontline services within Queensland.

"As a result, the 48 students enrolled in 2012 will be offered places at the Brisbane School of Distance Education."

Speaking of her disappointment at the decision, show community member Leann Allen has stated "one single decision by the Queensland Government, unless overturned, will destroy a community.

"We will be forced to separate families with boarding schools, second homes and single parents ... not to mention businesses that could collapse when one parent is forced to stay put.

"The trauma on families, emotional and financial, will be devasting. The (Queensland) Government is only counting dollars ... we need them to see children and our community for this to be effective."

Allen is now campaigning to preserve the school and has created a 'Save QSTSC' Facebook page.

Overnight, members of the group released a statement that read "pPrior to 2000 our children's education was haphazard and disadvantaged.

"Since having QSTSC our children have been more confident, academically and socially prepared for high school and further education. They have had choices we never had.

"Closing the school will force us back to an education that was dysfunctional, inconsistent and lacked continuity."

The school consists of two large mobile classrooms generally staffed by two teachers and an operations officer while a third classroom, a smaller Mercedes van driven by a teacher, caters for up to ten students.

The classrooms are mostly parked in the grounds of a local school in the town that is hosting the Show that week. The QSTSC students often access the facilities of the local school and to ensure they are provided with quality learning opportunities across the eight Learning Areas of the curriculum.

Each classroom is fitted with student desks, library space, IT resources, electronic whiteboards and all the usual resources found in regular classrooms.

By leveraging the use of information technologies, like web conferencing software, the Queensland Department of Education, Training and Employment's innovative Smart Classrooms strategies, the QSTSC has over the last 12 years provided a seamless transition between home and school.

Visit the 'Save QSTSC' Facebook page at www.facebook.com/SaveQstsc