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Brooks High School
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The Northern Suburbs of Launceston includes diverse suburbs and a rural aspect as well as large tracts of public housing. These suburbs are also the site of both heavy and light industry, as well as the TAFE College, the University of Tasmania, the Australian Maritime College and more. We have the Arts Academy, Inveresk Museum and Art Gallery precinct, the Showgrounds and the York Park sporting facilities. The school has formal and informal partnerships with hundred of businesses and community groups. The school works to use the presence of this diversity to advantage. Brooks has 630 students in Grade 7 to 10, with 15 year 11 VET Agriculture students, last time we counted! Student diversity includes a number of those from African countries as well as around 13% with Indigenous heritage. The school opened in 1948 and was rebuilt in a garden setting on the current site in 1990. Brooks has always included students in need of learning support or assistance due to home circumstances. The school has responded by has responded by developing a tradition of innovation. Adventure Pursuits, one version of outdoor education at Brooks, sees students in yachts and kayaks in the Tamar, rock climbing in Cataract Gorge, on mountain bikes somewhere and snorkelling at Lagoon Beach. Besides the above, anyone attending Brooks and taking farm-based course or VET Agriculture can learn to ride a horse! Students can go Fishing in our Time Table – that’s a Personal Interest (Option) course. Extra PI’s (Options) can eventuate, based on student requests. What WE call subjects aren’t really that at all. There’s nothing called Home Ec, but there’s Catering, Cooking for Beginners and Creative Crafts & Food. We don’t have Phys Ed – not as such anyway. We DO have Sports and Sports Safety, Fit Girls, Fitness and Weights and Sport Science. Curiously, growth areas in 2006 have been in the more demanding Science-based choices, Visual Art choices, then Fitness and Weights.
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