In 2005 Dandenong High School, which had 1500 students, merged with Doveton High School, which had 200 students and Cleland High School, which had 575 students. "This formed a new educational entity", with 2100 students and 200 staff.
There is a high multicultural background with 77 languages other than English and 25% of the students being refugees.
To facilitate the merger they asked the questions;
What does the community need?
What do we know about effective learning?
What do our students need?
This led them to design a school with seven houses in seven separate buildings. Each house has 300 students from year 7-12 and 25 staff.
Each building has two floors with flexible learning spaces which can be entirely open or closed off as needed. Year 7-10 have their core learning in their house but go off to other buildings for specialist lessons eg technology, music and P.E. Year 11 and 12 students have their classes in the house that their teacher belongs to.
Each house has a leader who is an A.P. and two leading teachers,an assistant leader and a student coordinator. Each house also has an attendance officer.
The associate principal oversees curriculum across all seven houses. Consistency across the school is achieved by making one senior teacher in each house responsible for an area of curriculum across the entire school.
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