Anne Simmons
Latrobe Valley high school students will benefit from a state government program designed to keep young people engaged with schooling, Education Minister James Merlino announced at Lowanna College on Wednesday.
Mr Merlino said the Navigator pilot program was a “roaring success” and his government had committed to rolling it out across the state.
“[Through] the pilot we have run across eight areas across the state we’ve re-engaged over 1000 young people back into education so we know that it works,” Mr Merlino said.
The announcement at the Newborough-based high school revealed the expansion of the program to inner Gippsland beginning 2019.
Inner Gippsland includes Latrobe Valley locations Moe, Morwell and Traralgon.
Navigator supports people between 12 and 17 years with low attendance records by providing access to a case worker and a range of support services to help them return to school.
“It’s about … looking at the individual needs, whether it’s trauma through family violence, whether it’s drug and alcohol,” Mr Merlino said.
“If you drop out of school at a young age it impacts you for the rest of your life, socially, financially, in terms of your health, so we needed to do something about it and [Labor] made a commitment under our education state targets to halve the number of kids disengaging with school.”
