Principal’s Welcome
It is with pleasure that I welcome
you and your children to our
unique and progressive school. We
offer an early years program for
300+ young children with Autism
Spectrum Disorder in Prep to Grade
3 (ages 4.5 to 9).
Western Autistic School is a government-funded school, which offers an early year’s program for 400 young children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Prep to Grade 3 (ages 4.5-9).
We aim to optimise educational opportunities for our students when they move into more mixed settings. To this end, we help our students build their functional communication, social emotional and language skills as well as their literacy and numeracy. We achieve this by providing intensive, personalised teaching at the start of each child’s schooling to then allow the students to use these strategies in an integrated setting. Our Inclusive Education Teacher (Outreach) follows the children into these schools.
At Western Autistic School, the individual child is at the centre of our work. The foundation of our teaching is the child’s own interests and motivations which forms the basis of their learning new skills and building self-esteem. We emphasise the welfare, inclusion and happiness of each child.
At our school, teaching teams supported by expert therapists work with small groups of children. Utilising proven teaching practice, an individual learning plan is developed for each child in consultation with the child, parents, and teaching team.
WAS is actively involved in research and training. It has a dedicated research unit, the Practical Research Autism Centre (PRAC), and a registered training provider The Autism Teaching Institute (ATI), which provides post-graduate qualifications to professionals working with people with ASD. Further information about WAS and its branches is available at:
We look forward to welcoming you to our school. During the coronavirus Covid19 emergency we invite you to view our Virtual Tours on this webpage, and to book a WebEx meeting to meet with staff and learn more about our school.
Adele Field
School Principal
Reference: School Community Policy below.
Our Team
Adele Field – Principal
Simon Williamson – Assistant Principal Teaching and Learning
Sarah Turner – Assistant Principal Wellbeing
Keda Meagher – Assistant Principal Inclusive Education
Samuel Hindes – Director Autism Teaching Institute
Sarah Testa – Business Manager
Rosalyn Janicki – Social Worker – Student and Family Wellbeing and Engagement
Glenis Williams – Leading Teacher
Johanna McIntyre – Leading Teacher
Nory Clough – Learning Specialist
Clifford Tuffnell – Learning Specialist
Andrea Webster – Learning Specialist
Maybelle Acosta – Learning Specialist
Lisa Faulks – Learning Specialist
Sophie Gibbon – Learning Specialist
Bridget Thompson – Learning Specialist
Jen Nicholls – Learning Specialist
Jacinta Porter – Leading Specialist - Autism Teaching Institute and Inclusive Education
Ben Testa – Learning Specialist - Inclusive Education
Fiona Whelan – Head Speech Pathologist
Our Staff at Work
Ulea Bayani and Holley Beckermann (pictured) contributed to a presentation delivered by Mary Thomson at the World Autism Congress in Houston, Texas in November 2018.
Ulea and Holley created vignettes of their work with students to tell the story of the school’s teaching and learning program and educational philosophy.
In this presentation, we hoped that sharing our knowledge and practice will assist other schools and educators around the globe to close the gap for learners with autism in school- based programs.
Our Values
Our school demonstrates our commitment to the following values:
Diversity Learning as an ongoing process
Respect Sharing and growth of knowledge
Collaboration
Our Governance
A specialist school dedicated to the
education of students with Autism
School Council Members
- Principal:
- Adele Field
- President:
- Jim Adamopoulos
- Treasurer:
- Joanne Darrington
- Executive Assistant:
- Sarah Testa
- Council Members:
- Sam Hindes
- Rosalyn Janicki
- Phil Burgoine
- Faye Forde
- Lauren Kummerle
