Tuesday, 14 November 2023

Victorian high-ability program

Nick McGOWAN (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:34): (590) My call to action comes tonight from two young awesome students from Heathmont East Primary School Bas and Luke. They wrote directly to the Minister for Education, and they said:

Our names are Bas and Luke, and we are Level five students at Heathmont East Primary School. Just a few weeks ago we asked our teacher about the Victorian High Ability Program (VHAP) for when we are in Grade six and she told us that once you have done VHAP once in Primary School you don’t get to do it again. This means that because we are in Grade five, we can’t do VHAP again. We were shocked and annoyed at this, so we wanted to write a letter.

We know that students in levels 5 and 6 can be selected to be in the VHAP program. This program helps high ability students minds to prosper. VHAP gives high ability students a chance to come together from schools all over Victoria and for us kids to be challenged in our learning outside of our classrooms. It’s a great idea and we have loved being a part of it. Some things that we have liked about VHAP is … l. The challenge, we have liked thinking about different things it’s not breasy or easy and we weren’t bored like we can be in a regular classroom. 2. We are not alone in being smart. 3. We liked working with other people. 4. We got to talk about interesting things like in VHAP maths we can turn any number into binary code and in VHAP English we talked about the hero’s journey of facing evil and returning on the other side of the story as a different person. That was really cool!

We have loved being part of VHAP and having a masterclass in person with another school. Even though VHAP has been amazing, it was for only 1 term. We felt bummed that it ended. We are in grade 5 and now that we have found out we can’t do this in grade 6 and that it’s over we are feeling annoyed. Kids who are good at sport get to keep playing sport, they don’t get cut off after 1 term. We need to be with other like-minded kids for more than 1 term only. Have we been forgotten about?

Can you please consider extending the VHAP course so that we can have the chance to continue to work with other like-minded peers and not just for 1 term?

Thank you for listening to us.

Kind regards,

Bas and Luke from Heathmont East Primary School …

a fantastic school in my electorate in Ringwood headed by an absolutely stand-out principal Anita Elliott as well.