Skyline 2020-21 AGM Chair's Report

I note with great pleasure that Skyline has performed well in the past 12 months, attracting new, multi year high value supporters and donors, who can see the value to the community, student and their families that come from their investment and successfully delivering services to a steadily increasing number of VCE students.

Our core business is to support gifted and talented VCE students who experience disadvantage.

Every so often we revisit the notion of gifted and talented in our cohort and it is good to do this. Each of the key terms, disadvantaged and gifted, come with myths and realities. This year has magnified the challenges and opportunities for Skyline students and hinted that there is something about resilience in our students that is valuable and should be nurtured. In a sense we have redefined our core purpose in 2020 as being an education provider which specialises in supporting a niche cohort of students, that no one else does.

Dr Ruby Payne reminds us that there is a myth that poverty is about money. The fact is that poverty is about a range of resources, Including emotional, mental, support systems, role models and relationships; knowledge of the hidden roles of middle class, language and formal register. And money.

Our students have typically not been to the Opera, the NGV, the State Library. Some students in the first Geelong cohort had never been to Melbourne. They do not have friends, family, or private staff to back them up in their education. They do not know the hidden rules of middle class, spend family time with successful adults in professional roles, share holiday spots and favourite restaurants, or access private tutors, or personalised support. They work a part time job to support their family, not for pocket money. They are not better nor worse than gifted students with more resources – but their pathway is undoubtedly harder.

So at the end of the day, many of them will not have the high ATARs of their counterparts with more resources than them. NAPLAN data says that their whole class level is likely to be up to three years behind their higher SES peers.

But we know that our students are just as gifted and talented, to the extent that their postcode will allow them to be. We have to help them believe in themselves and each other and build social capital bridges for them. That is our purpose and that is where we have excelled through lockdown in Victoria.

On behalf of these students may I acknowledge and express my greatest appreciation for the immense effort and support shown over a sustained period of time in 2020 to the CEO and all our staff, valued members of our two committees and Four Teams, my fellow members of the Skyline board, our patrons and ambassador and as always, our generous donors.