VCAL cut ‘to cost $500,000’

JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
THE REGION’S secondary schools will lose more than $500,000 for VCAL courses, a principal has estimated.
Bellarine Secondary College’s Colin Sing said his school would lose about $68,000 under State Government cuts to Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning.
“With 13 secondary schools in the region, its not hard to see it go over $500,000,” he said.
Mr Sing was among principals to sign an open letter protesting the $48 million cut.
VCAL gives students practical, skills-based education as an alternative to university-orientated VCE studies.
“All we can do is continue putting pressure on the government through the secondary principals association and local politicians to rescind the decision,” Mr Sing said.
“Time is getting short to put VCAL coordinators in as a funded component of the budget.
“We’re well into planning for the 2012 school year. We have 100 students in the program.
“Clearly we need coordinators and the cuts mean some other programs in the school have to be chopped. We don’t want to be cutting other programs but we can’t run our VCAL program without coordinators.”
Belmont High School’s Michael Caccamo said he faced a $38,000 cut.
“We had 60 students in three groups and our VCAL program had extensive community links, which take a lot of time and effort to develop.
“Our students are engaged in community groups like Kalkee aged care, a number of primary schools, City of Greater Geelong, Port of Geelong and Barwon Water.
“The cut means our staff member doesn’t have the time allowance to continue this work.
“I’m also concerned about the quality of the program and that it won’t be as engaging.”
Mr Caccamo said he was worried student retention in the program could fall.
“We have already had parents contacting us asking whether the program will continue and in the same format. We intend to try running the program next year but the true impact of this won’t be felt until 2013.”