Camps and excursions support drought-impacted students

North of Adelaide and on the outskirts of the Barossa Valley, the famous old mining town Kapunda has felt the significant trickling impact of drought on its schooling community.

Kapunda High School was successful in receiving funding to support country students at public schools who have been financially impacted by drought for camps and excursions.

Its principal, Tim Jones, said the impacts have been felt by the families in the agricultural sector, trickling down from big businesses in the industry.

"We’re a bit of a unique rural community, in that we have a number of larger agribusinesses with a lot of our community connected to industry," he said.

"We’ve certainly noticed the impact within the school that when things aren't going well economically for our district, families move away for work."

Kapunda is home to roughly 3000 people, with about 650 students enrolled in the high school.

"You can tell there’s not as much money in the community; there’s a flow down effect from the drought," he said.

"We took the position that we wanted to support as many of our families as possible in terms of financial respite and relief.

"We have been able to spread support quite widely across the school to really encourage kids' participation in events.

"Excursions provide an opportunity for students to access learning outside of our district, through curriculum excursions and those sorts of things."

The funding has been used to help fund camps in years 7 and 10, in addition to extracurricular excursions, such as tourism-based education in the Barossa Valley or learning civics and citizenship in the Adelaide CBD