There are four adult re-entry high schools in South Australia, all in the suburbs of Adelaide and strategically placed to maximise access across the greater metropolitan area: Hamilton Secondary College in the south west, Thebarton Senior College in the west, Marden Senior College in the East, and Para West Adult Re-entry Campus in the North. Several other high school in the State also have small to medium sized cohorts of adults, a trend which will be a relevant consideration in any future expansion of the availability of the UniSA-PAL course.
All four adult re-entry schools were established as adult second chance schools at the beginning of the last decade, as a social justice commitment by the State Government of the time to open study and employment opportunities to adults who had not completed their secondary education. Approximately 6,000 adults have accessed such education each year since the early 1990s. While their initial focus on catch-up education and completion of secondary education through the South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE) was similar at each site, their development and educational programs have differentiated them since then and they now vary in their specialisations and structures.
Brief information is given above in section 4.2 about Para West Adult Re-entry Campus, the school which suggested the basis for the UniSA-PAL course, and which offered and taught the course in 2002. Early in the conduct of the initial pilot, the remaining three adult re-entry schools in South Australia expressed their interest in exploring whether similar arrangements could be made for the PAL course to be offered at their sites in the following year. Brief information about each follows.
Hamilton Secondary College is located in the southern Adelaide suburb of Mitchell Park. Unlike the other three adult re-entry schools, it is part of a complex and mixed campus consisting not only of an adult re-entry school, but a more traditional senior secondary school (years 10-13), a middle school (years 7-9), and a centre for children with severe, multiple, and intellectual disabilities. There are approximately 1,200 adults enrolled in the adult campus at any time, but since many of them study part-time this amounts to about 570 students in full time equivalence. These adults come mainly from the southwest, west and south central metropolitan areas150 with some from the north and eastern suburbs as well. Based on information provided by the school,151 the adult students are not well off and are trying to improve their life options by returning to education. Hamilton has specialised in vocational education in the last few years, moving away to some extent from the more traditional senior secondary SACE offerings. It is a Registered Training Organisation (RTO) and delivers a range of training packages under the Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF).
Marden Senior College emerged from the pre-existing Marden High School between 1990 and 1992, when it became an entirely adult campus. It is located in the north eastern suburb of Marden and its students range in age from 15 to 85 with the majority in the 18-26 age range. The students come from a wide geographical area, from the township of Gawler to the north of Adelaide to Mount Barker in the eastern Adelaide Hills area, and from a range of socio-economic backgrounds. Marden is similar in size to Hamilton with 600 full time equivalent students. In common with the other adult re-entry schools, it has experienced a trend of an increasing number of younger students, often immediate or recent school leavers, who have more in common with year 13 or even year 14 students taking three to four years to finish their SACE rather than the more traditional adult re-entry students who are returning to study after a significant time away from it. Marden’s specialisation is that it has a greater emphasis on stage two of the SACE, or year 12 of traditional senior secondary curriculum than the other three schools. In addition, Marden is a Registered Training Organisation (RTO) for the delivery of multimedia and business training packages.
Thebarton Senior College is located in Torrensville, an inner western suburb of Adelaide and considerably closer to the city itself than the other three adult re-entry schools. It developed from the former Thebarton Boys Technical High School into the co-educational Thebarton High School, and emerged as Thebarton Senior College for the same reasons as the other three. Its students come from a diverse range of backgrounds and circumstances. In common with the others, Thebarton offers a range of study pathways for adults re-entering education. It also offers a specialised learning program in English language skills for adults who have newly arrived in Australia, as Marden has also during the last four years. Currently there are 135 students in this program at Thebarton, predominantly refugees from Africa and the Middle East.