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Middle Years

In 2008

Year 7 students will be welcomed into middle schools, joining Year 8 and Year 9 students.
Nightcliff, Dripstone and Sanderson high schools will become dedicated middle schools to join Anzac and Alice Springs schools in Central Australia.
Darwin Middle School will be officially opened in 2008 for students in Years 7 and 8.
Darwin High School will prepare Year 9 students for their move to the Senior Years. In 2009, Darwin High School will become a dedicated senior school.
Dedicated middle and senior schools will be fully operational at Palmerston, Taminmin, Katherine, Tennant Creek and Nhulunbuy.
The number of remote schools delivering the Middle Years and the Senior Years will expand in 2008.

Middle Years will make school more interesting for students. It will give you more opportunities to learn about topics that you are interested in and develop skills that you can use in your life.
It will also make it easier and less overwhelming for students moving from primary school to secondary school.
In the Middle Years, you will generally have a main classroom, with 2 to 3 teachers for some of your subjects. For other subjects, like Technology and Design and The Arts, you will move to other classrooms with different teachers.
Many teachers have already used the Middle Years approach to teach students and they have found it successful. Over the next two years, Middle Years will be introduced into government schools so all students across the Territory will have the opportunity to benefit from this approach.

It makes good sense to group Years 7 to 9 students in the same school because:

- it makes it easier for students and teachers to work together

- students in these years have similar interests and needs

- it will give students more opportunities to learn specialist subjects.
You will generally have a group of teachers that just teach Middle Years students. This means teachers can pay more attention to each student and develop programs to suit their interests.

Most students will go to the middle school closest to their home. You can apply to enrol in a school outside your local area, however those schools can only enrol students from outside their local area if there is enough room.

It is important that students are supported in the transition to a middle school. Each school will have programs in place so that students feel confident and comfortable.

Teachers who want to move with students to a middle school will be able to apply to go to that school. Whether they move to the middle school will depend on how many other teachers want to transfer. Some teachers will prefer to stay in their current school.