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[On-screen text: Inclusion Outreach Coaching. Ascot Vale Heights School]
[On-screen text: Inclusion Outreach Coaching aims to improve the capabilities, practice and confidence of the education workforce to build inclusive practices and, in doing so, improve student outcomes.]
Nancy Sidoti: Ascot Vale Heights School is a special school. We cater for students with an intellectual disability from that mild to moderate range.
Nancy Sidoti: Part of the initiative in terms of rolling out the Inclusion Outreach Coaching is that every special school will appoint an Inclusion Outreach Coach. So they are part of your staff but in fact they have a lot of system work and work across the region implementing those Tier One strategies.
Nancy Sidoti: The role of the IOC at the base school allows them to have a look at the systems and practices that are in place and they can actually have fresh eyes on the things that we're doing - what sort of improvements we can make as a school to improve our delivery and our inclusive practices. So there's some really deep whole school work that can happen that I'm really pleased that the IOC has been able to sort of lead. And she has a team that supports her work because whilst she's only here for one day a week, you know, in order to get that sustained inclusion, you need to sort of continue to build that momentum.
Nancy Sidoti: There's also opportunities for the IOC and the host school principal to have that sort of mentoring coaching conversations, which is really helpful in terms of their work. But also it's an opportunity to get some feedback about how the work is going here at our school.
Nancy Sidoti: For a long time, I think that special schools and mainstream schools have sort of worked in silos, and so we're committed to improving inclusive practices across our system. And this is one of those initiatives that will really drive that improvement.
[On-screen text: The Education State / Victoria State Government / Department of Education / Victoria State Government – Authorised by the Victorian Government, Melbourne]
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