Head Teacher: Ms Lauren Derrick
The refugee support program at Fairvale High School is an ongoing and developing program.
Currently Fairvale High School has a refugee enrolment that is upwards of 10% of the school. Our refugee cohort ranges from Years 7-12 and our feeder Intensive English Centres (IEC) are Fairfield IEC, Cabramatta IEC and Holroyd IEC. We have a refugee support Coordinator and a refugee support Leader who are both at Fairvale High School.
We have had several programs running to help support our refugee students and their families transitioning into their new community in Australia. Some of the programs we run are:
- The Welcome program: for our newly enrolled refugee students
- The Buddy program: where new enrolments are teamed up with a buddy for a day
- Lunch at Fairvale: for our refugee parents to come in to the school, share a lunch with staff and have guest speakers providing them with information at their specific request.
We also run several other support programs such as Ready Arrive Work (RAW). As well as this, we run parent excursions along with NSW Serice for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors (STARTTS). We aim to support our incoming and outgoing refugee students as much as we possibly can. Many of our senior students have opportunities to apply for Tertiary scholarships and traineeships. We also offer a specialised Trauma counsellor for our refugee students with the help of STARTTS.
Our school is a warm and welcoming environment for our refugee students, where they are welcomed and feel safe looking forward to a secure future within our community.