Parent community engagement
Parents and the broader community play a vital role in supporting successful learning outcomes for our children. This framework is about schools engaging with parents and communities to work together to maximise student learning outcomes.
The research tells us that the most meaningful partnerships are those where schools, parents, students and the community work together to focus on student learning. Parent and community engagement that is effectively focused on student learning can deliver powerful outcomes.
This Parent and Community Engagement Framework identifies what schools can do to strengthen learning outcomes for students – through effective partnerships between principals, teachers, students, parents and the community. It sends a call to action to our schools to focus on parent and community engagement as a key part of supporting student learning.
The Babies of Walloon
In the latter part of the nineteenth century 2 young children, Bridget Kate and Mary Jane Broderick, drowned at a waterhole at Walloon. This tragic event was the subject of a poem penned by Henry Lawson in 1891 titled 'The Babies of Walloon'. This link to Henry Lawson resulted in the redevelopment of nearby Henry Lawson Bicentennial Park which includes a bronze life sized statue memorialising the 2 little girls and a bronze Henry Lawson lectern and poet's platform. The children of Walloon act as guardians for the park and a quilt commemorating Bridget and Mary hangs in the school library.
Each year the students at the school take part in poetry writing workshops to enter the Ipswich Poetry Feast competition set up to commemorate the event. Children also attend the annual Poets' breakfast in the park.