Following desperate pleas from parents, a new specialist school for neurodiverse students is expected to open in Melton in 2027.
An initiative of Melbourne-based organisation Autism Goals, the school is expected to open at the beginning of the 2027 and the organisation has begun writing its policies.
It is set to cater for young people from preschool to year 10 and then onto flexible learning pathways.
While still in the early stages of the project, the organisation has had discussions with the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, which is the governing body for school registrations.
Former principal and Autism Goals chief executive Pauline Aquilina said the idea for the school came from an absolute desperate plea from parents.
“Here in the west, we are desperate for this kind of support for our neurodiverse community. It’s been a long time in the waiting,” she said.
“The reason we decided to investigate and begin looking at the school was … because we worked with students with disabilities with neurodiverse people who aren’t able to be supported in mainstream schools and are having significant harm happening to them because the adjustments have not been able to [be] made.
“They’re not feeling safe, they’re not feeling secure, and they’re also not psychologically safe … they’re hypervigilant, which means their body is in the fight, flight, fawn, freeze mode, and that means that they can’t access their rational brain to be able to engage in learning.
Ms Aquilina said there is a really complicated system where young people need adjustments so that they are able to access learning but for a multitude of reasons, for many neurodiverse young people, that’s not happening.
“It’s not because there’s ill intent or teachers who don’t care – that’s not the reason – the context that we’re in right now means that our young people are not accessing what they need to thrive … they’re barely surviving,” she said.
“I’m not being alarmist when I say [this] – the number of young people that are self-harming, that can’t attend school because of psychological burnout and suicide attempts is increasing exponentially.”
She said the number of parents choosing home schooling as opposed to mainstream education and specialist settings has grown.
The school will eventually incorporate a hybrid learning model.
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