Southern Cross Public School

Southern Cross School K-12 has an enrolment of approximately 980 students from Kindergarten to Year 12 on a magnificent 19 hectare site located at East Ballina, including support classes for students with moderate to severe intellectual and multi-non-categorical disabilities. The school also has more than another 450 equivalent full-time students' in Years 7-12 studying via distance education mode. These students are located across the far north coast and northern tablelands and may study a single subject or their entire course through this mode. The values of Respect, Responsibility and Excellence are major drivers of the overall schools' operations. The School Plan drives daily activities and staff efforts which focus the school on developing all students in a calm, supportive and friendly setting. The Quality Teaching Framework binds learning across the school to meet the needs of all students to maximise learning outcomes. Students have access to volunteering programs, student well-being initiatives, creative and performing arts, service organisation linkages, peer tutoring programs in literacy, reading recovery strategies, quality teaching initiatives, as well as academic support towards the Higher School Certificate. The school's Parent and Citizen group is dedicated and supportive of all school actions and participate actively in decisions. Well developed partnerships with local industry and service organisations are a feature of our school. Parents regularly comment extremely positively on the advantages of their children attending one highly effective school from kindergarten through to Year 12. Students from our school develop strong acceptance of their roles in working cooperatively with others to achieve success. Learning resources are supported by state of the art well resourced libraries; computer laboratories; two canteens; a full dance studio; an international standard sports stadium; a K-6 hall, high quality technology and wireless computer access across the 7-12 department; well developed, expansive and green playground areas; a developing environmentally integrated science facility; a digital music recording studio; digital and wet photography labs; a film and video production hub; connected classroom; and video conferencing facilities. Teacher expertise and skills continue to grow with well developed and accessed professional learning programs, both in-house and externally sourced. All staff, both teaching and non-teaching, are highly committed to the values of our school and demonstrate dedicated service to the delivery of quality learning opportunities at all times. We are an active and proud member of The Plateau to the Sea learning community of schools, which includes 14 primary and 3 secondary public schools. Joint senior curriculum with Ballina High School is enabling even greater student subject selection and increased access to quality resources and staff expertise.