Health & Wellbeing News

ACTIVE SCHOOLS/SPORTING SCHOOLS

We have received some incredible news for the Jackson School community in the last few weeks.  About three weeks ago, we received notification from Sporting Schools that we have been successful in receiving $4500 dollars to run our popular coaching programs for our Primary (Yr 3-6) and Secondary (Yr 7-10) students for Term 1 2025.   The 4-week coaching programs will be conducted in the sports of Basketball and Football (Soccer) for our Primary students and Cricket and Netball for our secondary students.

Following up on the tail of this successful grant application, we were also successful in receiving a $17000 from the Active Schools Program (ACPHER Victoria).  It is through this funding that we have been providing our Morning Fitness sessions for students from Yr 3-12.  This program is delivered by Jarrod Borg from Spectrum Health and has been in operation for the last four years, and currently provides 30-minute fitness sessions for around 160 students each week.

Finally, to cap this off, we received another $30,000 from the Active Schools Program to continue our Coaches in Residence Program.  This is the second consecutive year that we have received this funding, and I am told by my Physical Activity Advisor, it is an extremely rare occurrence. 

This year, through this funding, we were able to establish resident coaches in Tennis, Hip Hop and Football for students from Yr 3-10.  All of the coaches in this program are local and the main goal is to funnel students into these clubs/organisations so that they may take part in these sports out of school hours.

The Coaches in Residence program has provided Jackson School students from Yrs 3-10 with a total of 16 weeks of coaching in the three areas of expertise.  The program evolved slowly with 95 students from Yr 7-10 being exposed to it in Term 1. In Term 2 we expanded on the delivery and it was made available to 148 students from Yr 5-10.  In Term 3 we expanded the program yet again, delivering coaching and participation opportunities to 189 students from Yr 3-10.  In Term 4, the program continued to operate for 101 students from Yr 5/6 and Yr 9/10.  In all 44 coaching sessions were delivered to a combined total of 533 students.  Each session ran for 45 minutes and was part of the allocated Health and Fitness sessions made available through our timetable.

Funding received through the Federal Government’s Sporting Schools Program provided our school with 16, 4-week coaching sessions in the sports of Taekwondo, Tennis, Football and Basketball.  Sporting Schools teams with National Sporting Organisations, to provide opportunities to connect with these sports, with a similar goal of helping students to connect with local sporting groups.