By Aaron Cordy
LANGUAGE skills are a gateway into the world. For children who struggle with language their lives can be filled with massive challenges, especially at a time when they should be discovering life and beginning their school journey.
Mooroopna Primary School (MPS), along with its partners, Mooroopna Children and Families Centre (MCFC) and Our Place (OP), saw the challenges many of their students faced with language and oral skills. With the aid of the Greater Shepparton Foundation, which provided funding for MPS to employ a Speech Pathologist (SP) through its Oral Language Intervention (OLI) program, the SP suggested that early intervention would help improve the outcomes of children transitioning to primary school.
The OLI program also connected the school with fourth-year Speech Pathology students to undertake their eight-week placements at the Mooroopna site. That allowed them to screen three- and four-year-olds at MCFC, to help them flow into foundation students.
The program gives a two-year window for children to get extra help before starting school. Language development is built into daily teaching, not treated as a separate support.
“We’ve already seen some great progress, even the year before, with the four-year-olds that we were able to get some early intervention for, we’ve seen huge growth in their capacity,” said MPS Principal Karen Goodwin.
That progress in learning capacity saw MPS, MCFC and OP win the Continuity of Early Learning award at the 2025 Victorian Early Years Awards, for the Oral Language Intervention program.
The benefits of the program will have a ripple effect not only for the current batch of MSP and MCFC children, as they transition from kinder to school, but will also continue to build confidence that will hopefully follow them throughout their school years.
The award and the program are a remarkable achievement for the school and childcare centre, one they are not keeping to themselves. They’ve begun discussions with all the Mooroopna early learning centres to begin screening all the three and four-year-olds next year, to give every child in Mooroopna the best start in their education.
