Doveton College
Building education for the future
21 December 2012
Julius Colman, Executive Director, Colman Foundation
Education is the key to the door. Education is the key for getting out of poverty.
Brett New, Principal, Doveton College
What we’re on about is transforming the lives of young people, their families and community.
June McLoughlin, Director – Family & Children’s Services, Doveton College
The vision at the school is about engaging the families so that they feel comfortable and they want
to come into the school.
Brett New, Principal, Doveton College
It’s a village. It’s a village that you invite people into.
Daniel Leach McGill, Site Coordinator, Good Beginnings Australia
I think it’s overflowing with goodwill. I think everyone who comes to, or operates from, this service,
is really committed to the work that they’re doing.
Deverathe Bala Murali Krishna, Student
I feel really relaxed and I’m glad coming to school.
Brett New, Principal, Doveton College
It’s the learning spaces that you invite our children into to work with one another and to work with
adults in ways that haven’t occurred before. It’s the Colman Foundation, Julius and Pamela Colman.
They visited Los Angeles, had come into contact with Andre Agassi and what he was doing over there
in disadvantaged areas and took that idea to the government of the day.
Julius Colman, Executive Director, Colman Foundation
With his name and his brand and everything else, he’s been able to raise a huge amount of money
but what he decided to do, was he built a private school and charged no fees to the local kids. So, we
thought we couldn’t do anything as big as that, but maybe something like that was a good idea.
June McLoughlin, Director – Family & Children’s Services, Doveton College
The combination of philanthropy and the government and a range of other service providers is
what’s making this dream happen, as well as commitment by a lot of people.
Brett New, Principal, Doveton College
When we talk about Doveton College, we talk about a community hub, a community site where
there’s no wrong door.
Julius Colman, Executive Director, Colman Foundation
We can not help, not educate, allow them to fall through the cracks in the floor and have something
that can actually be detrimental to society. Why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you choose to
make a difference?
Brett New, Principal, Doveton College
The challenge of bringing together community, young people and staff to think about what the
possibilities might be and to take those possibilities and make them real on the ground.
June McLoughlin, Director – Family & Children’s Services, Doveton College
And, so, we really need to keep in our mind that it is demonstration and that we are breaking new
ground. We always go back to what the evidence tells us is what we should be doing, in terms of
direction.
Julius Colman, Executive Director, Colman Foundation
If we really want to make a difference, we’re going to have to make this place different. There’s no
point starting the kids off in grade 1 and, by the time they’re in grade 3, they’re two and a half years
behind. So, how do you make a difference? How do you change that?
Brett New, Principal, Doveton College
For the first time in Australia, what we’re attempting to do here, as a school, and the school is a very
important thing, is to work with community from prenatal to post-compulsory education.
June McLoughlin, Director – Family & Children’s Services, Doveton College
So that we can have children in really rich environments with highly qualified staff and we know if
we get the early years right, then children’s progress through the more formal education will be
much, much easier.
Brett New, Principal, Doveton College
It’s the fifth most disadvantaged metropolitan area in Australia. I work with multiple agencies. What
we want to be able to do here, is bring those agencies together in partnership.
June McLoughlin, Director – Family & Children’s Services, Doveton College
What we’ve been able to put into place through the development of really positive relationships and
partnerships, is a full suite of health and community supports, alongside the high quality early
learning environments and school environments that we’ve got here.
Brett New, Principal, Doveton College
The premise of the whole project is you’ve got to work with the whole child and the whole family.
Daniel Leach McGill, Site Coordinator, Good Beginnings Australia
That is one of the strengths of the groups and the approach here is the relationships that can be
formed. Relationships with service providers that start informally, so you meet the person before
you meet the service that they belong to. And through that relationship, families can often access
things that they wouldn’t have necessarily considered.
June McLoughlin, Director – Family & Children’s Services, Doveton College
We have paediatric services, child health nurses, oral health, refugee health nurses, a range of
different therapists and allied health people here, very close connections with DHS, with our Child
Protection Services, with Centrelink and a big component that we are currently working on, is how
we can provide additional support to parents, in terms of their own skills.
Daniel Leach McGill, Site Coordinator, Good Beginnings Australia
It does create a really strong sense of belonging. You don’t feel as though you’re having a service
provided to you. You feel like you’re coming to meet with other people.
Brett New, Principal, Doveton College
Schools can’t achieve alone. Partnerships and particularly working with community and parents, is
absolutely essential if young people are going to realise the potential they all have.
Sheree Geronimo, Parent
My two year old, coming as ... well, she was two when she started, has now learned how to count,
interacting with children – I couldn’t have wished for a better place for her to be, really. She’s grown
so much, as a child.
June McLoughlin, Director – Family & Children’s Services, Doveton College
We focus, very much, our program around how we build capable, confident, caring children, with
good empathy, good communication.
Deverathe Bala Murali Krishna, Student
I feel really happy because when it’s really important when teachers listen to us because we talk
about ideas and this can be done, and the teachers says ‘ah, yes, this can be done. Maybe we can
jazz it up like this’. So, it’s really nice, hearing from the teachers.
Brett New, Principal, Doveton College
It’s a journey that we’re all on, but I think it’s a journey that we are all dedicated to, we’re absolutely
passionate about and we believe that we’re going to get there.
Julius Colman, Executive Director, Colman Foundation
The right way to do it is get philanthropy or business attached to a school. A one-to-one relationship
and where the skills the business, the philanthropy can bring is attached to that school, we engage
the local community and, together, we build something with them. That’s better.
June McLoughlin, Director – Family & Children’s Services, Doveton College
We don’t see this as a one-stop shop. We see it as a fully integrated model that says this is a placebased approach, supporting the Doveton community.
Brett New, Principal, Doveton College
We’ve got a really strong belief that, through no fault of their own, these children are
disadvantaged. We believe that they have huge potential. We believe that they can learn, they want
to learn, that they have aspirations of every other, the same as every other child out there and what
we want to be able to do, I’m absolutely confident that we’ll achieve it. We want them to realise
their dreams.