PRINCIPALS WELCOME

Welcome to Yarrabah Schools website. We hope you enjoy navigating the site and find the information within useful and educational.

Yarrabah School is located in Melbournes bayside suburb of Aspendale. We cater for children aged between 2.8 and 18 years with an intellectual disability.

Yarrabah’s purpose is to maximise student potential by providing an individualised safe learning environment that promotes active learning, encourages adventure, independence and self-esteem. Yarrabah provides all students an individualised curriculum with therapeutic supports that prepare them for life as valued community members.

Our philosophy is REAL. Relationships, Explicitness, Ability and Learning for Life are the four pillars of the Yarrabah Framework of which align closely with FISO 2.0.

Yarrabah School prides itself on providing relevant and valuable communications that will assist our community to navigate through these challenging times. Yarrabah School aims to sustain a strong connection with families by establishing and maintaining strong working relationships with students, families and staff. 

Yarrabah provides its families with helpful advice, community resources and school information in a timely manner across dedicated platforms. We use Seesaw as the main communication tool between home and school, posting regular communications about the daily activities and outcomes of students. We also use Seesaw for posting whole school communications that are important for all. The school uses Compass as a platform for posting personal information related to excursions, school permissions, health, school reports and IEPs.  

Yarrabah School places great focus on improving student learning outcomes within the core curriculum areas. Our homeroom teachers deliver a differentiated and scaffolded curriculum according to the school's yearly curriculum map. The school ensures homeroom teachers can remain focussed on the core curriculum for students of all abilities by also employing subject specialist teachers. Subject specialists deliver engageing and exciting curriclum across the primary and secondary years within science, critical and creative thinking, the arts, horticulture, health and physcial education.

Yarrabah is renowned for its mental health and well-being services. The schools new strategic plan (2022-2026) identifies the importance of providing a systematic and intergrated service team (IST) approach that supports students throughout their entire school expereince. An IST approach provides each student and their family the support they need, when they need it and the therapy services to enable all students to access the curriclum in a safe and supported way. Our IST approach provides universal and tiered supports in a structured and data informed manner in the areas of Student Engagement, Capabilities Curriculum, Health and Physial Activity, Mental Health and Wellbeing.

My staff and I will always be available to listen and answer your enquiries as best we can. With only 175 school aged students and 60 part time Early Education Program children we are your small school with the big heart.

Kindest Regards,

Matthew Harris
Principal