Type Special school Grades 1-6 Phone +61 3 9097 2000 Founded 1979 | Established 1979 Colour(s) Green and White Principal Mary Thomson | |
Similar Warringa Park School, Jackson School, Port Phillip Specialist School, Seabrook Primary School, Rosamond School | ||
A tour of western autistic school for world autism awareness day
Western Autistic School, Laverton, Australia, is an educational organisation for students who have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which was established in 1979 in a church hall with six pupils. In 2014 it has 320 pupils. The school caters for students up to grade 3.
It has two campuses, the main campus at Laverton with 200+ students and the original school at Niddrie with 100+ students. It also has a full-time adolescent program called Wattle at the Autism Training Institute in Flemington.
The long serving and now retired principal Val Gill, won the Outstanding School Leadership Award of the Victorian Education Excellence Awards, and received a Public Service Medal as a Queen's Birthday Honour in 2007. Ms Gill was a vocal opponent to the creation of an autism P-12 school for Western Melbourne despite it being revealed in the Autism Education Provisions Review that approximately half the students from WAS transition to Special Education Schools.
The new purpose built school in Laverton with a swimming pool, was completed in late 2010, and opened on 9 November 2011.
Between 1994 and 2015, the school ran an adolescent program called the Baseroom out of a room at Essendon Keilor College's Niddrie campus. It was closed down in 2015 due to budget cuts. The Baseroom allowed students to attended EKC as usual, in full EKC uniform, while using the Baseroom at lunch breaks. The school also ran an adolescent art and music program for some years, which too was axed in 2015.