An Extraordinary School

A must-read book for educators, parents, carers and therapists of children with special needs, An Extraordinary School will challenge you to re-think about how special education is taught.

Port Phillip Specialist School has received national and international recognition as a best-practice model for educating children with special needs.

The school has a unique three-pronged approach to education:

1. A full-service school model, in which a wide-range of educational, medical, paramedical and mental health services operate collaboratively within the school
2. An integrated model of service delivery, in which teachers, specialists and therapists collaborate to address the specific needs of each student, embedding therapy in all classroom activities
3. An arts-based curriculum that uses dance, drama, music and the visual arts to teach literacy, numeracy and living skills.

An Extraordinary School will inspire those who want to re-model how special education can be taught, and this story of Port Phillip Specialist School illustrates how effective the entire community can be in making change happen.

The book is the result of close collaboration with many people including Bella Irlicht, the former principal of the school who over 20 years developed the school from a one-room, basic facility into the state-of-the-art school it is today; academics Professor Brian Caldwell, Professor Martin Comte OAM, and Dr Carl Parsons who worked with Bella Irlicht on the development of the curriculum and various teachers and parents.