History and Philosophy

St Joseph’s Flexible Learning Centre is part of Youth+, an initiative of Edmund Rice Education Australia. Youth+ services including 20 Flexible Learning Centres located around Australia, to full-time and multi-year secondary education and social inclusion programs for young people who are disengaged/disenfranchised from mainstream education.

Youth+ is guided by the vision of Edmund Rice about the empowering service of education, to achieve personal and community liberation through education experiences that enable transformation.  Youth+ seeks to respond to the needs of young people by providing a place and an opportunity for young people to re-engage in a suitable, flexible learning environment.

The philosophy that underpins the Youth+ approach is based on the application of four core principles of:

• Respect (self, others and environment);
• Safe and Legal;

• Participation; and
• Honesty

The principles apply to all participants of the community and are a significant point of difference from mainstream schooling. The principles establish a “common ground” among staff, young people and families where the means to resolve conflict, negotiate learning, recognise rights and responsibilities are modelled and explored, both within the group and individually.

About St Joseph’s

Commencing operations as a registered school in 2012, St Joseph’s Flexible Learning Centre (SJFLC) provides an inclusive and non-discriminating learning community to young people, who are enrolled from a variety of genders, sexualities, language, cultural and religious backgrounds, with particular sensitivity to indigenous culture and from backgrounds of socio-economic disadvantage, and generally for a variety of reasons, missed significant periods of schooling.

The SJFLC has two campuses, North Melbourne- established in 2012, and Geelong – established in 2016.  Both campuses offer Victorian Curriculum (VC) and Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) and outhreach school programs. 

• The VC class aims to deliver an integrated cirriculum for young people who are working at level 7-10.
• The VCAL class delivers Foundation, Intermediate and Senior VCAL.  Young people enrolled in VCAL also have the opportunity to enrol in a VET subject.
• In Geelong, the Koori Culture Class (KCC) aims to deliver a culturally appropriate curriculum to young people who are interested in discovering more about their cultural identity.
• The Student Support Stream delivers a number of programs focused on supporting young people to re-engage into our school community via the Outreach Education Program, Intensive Support Worker Program, Enrolment and Induction Program.

The SJFLC curriculum aims to be appropriate to the needs of young people.  Social emotional learning is a major component of this.  Out approach to addressing the wellbeing needs of young people is both multi-faceted and multi-dimensional, and involves an integration of learning and wellbeing, through the development and implementation of internal and external partnerships focussed on improving a young persons’s learning and wellbeing.