Warringa Park School Success Story

Warringa Park School Empowering Learning in the Classroom using HP DesignJet Z6 series printer

Classrooms across Australia are changing. Teachers are welcoming more students with diverse learning needs than ever before, each requiring clear, predictable and accessible ways to understand their world.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2022, 12.1 per cent of children and young people aged nought to 24 had disability, up from 8.3 per cent in 2018.

This has had a profound effect on learning and teaching in classrooms, with 6.6 percent of these children and young people having a learning and understanding disability, up from 4.2 per cent in 2018, and 3.6 per cent a sensory and speech disability, up from 2.6 per cent in 2018.

For schools, this shift means moving beyond traditional teaching approaches and embracing tools that make learning more visual, more structured and more inclusive for every student.

As demand increases for inclusive learning environments for these children and young people, classrooms have had to adapt.

Visual supports in the classroom can help students on the autism spectrum. Abstract concepts, such as time, can be represented in concrete images to make it easier for children to transition between tasks, and enable them to know what’s going to happen next.

These kinds of learning supports also give other students with disability the ability to express themselves without speaking, which can increase independence and spontaneous social interaction.

How one school is doing it

Warringa Park School, in Melbourne’s west, is a specialist school serving students aged five to 18 with mild to profound intellectual disabilities, autism, and complex needs.

“Warringa Park School is a really unique environment,” assistant principal Amy Byrne said.

“With different learning needs in the class, one of the major challenges we face is ensuring that the learning is differentiated and accessible to all students.

“Visual resources are really important to help our students connect with content. Language is fleeting and variable and, for our students, visuals are really concrete and able to support them to connect to the learning.”

Walk into any classroom at Warringa Park and you’ll see how they are used. These aren’t resources ordered months in advance from an external supplier, they’re designed by teachers and printed on the school’s HP DesignJet Z6 series printer.

“At HP, we believe access changes everything. When learners can connect, they can belong. When they belong, they can thrive. Warringa Park School shows how thoughtful design turns technology into possibility. Our promise is to stand beside educators with tools that make inclusion real, every day.” said HP education ambassador Brett Salakas.

According to the school’s resource manager, Linda McCue, it’s simple to create them.

“As a resource manager, staff will let me know what they want; so a lot of posters, diagrams, and charts for the classrooms. I find it really easy to do with our printer,” she said.

Ms Byrne said that the school can make a diverse range of resources to help students learn in different ways.

“The material we create with the HP DesignJet is a lot of hands-on learning resources for the students. That might be something that needs to be cut, it might be something that needs to be looked at, like a poster, it might be a communication system that a student can access.”

Ultimately, Ms Byrne adds, the school is all about instilling a love of learning in their students and the kinds of resources they can create, enable that.

“Making them bigger and bolder and able to engage the students is really important. When students have access to these resources it increases their engagement and participation in the learning significantly.

“Seeing students have joy and engagement in their learning is everything that we aim to achieve for our learners, so it’s really heartwarming to see students really passionate about their learning and their education.”

For IT managers, the appeal is clear: HP Click Print solutions offer effortless printing. The interactive real-print preview and automatic error detection ensures accuracy and minimises reprints, providing complete control over the printing process. This reliability is critical when a child’s entire communication system depends on a morning print run.

Visual supports, augmentative communication tools, and sensory regulation resources are no longer “nice-to-have” – they are essential adjustments in today’s diverse learning environment.

The bigger picture

HP’s commitment to education runs deeper than hardware.

Through its Reinvent the Classroom initiative and partnerships with organisations serving students with diverse needs, the company is working to ensure that technology doesn’t just sit in classrooms, it changes them.

Large-format printing might once have been seen as the domain of architecture firms and marketing departments. Today, in the hands of Australian educators, the HP DesignJet is giving teachers the ability to bring ideas to life at scale.

Watch the new HP Education short film featuring Warringa Park School to see the HP DesignJet in action and hear directly how it works for teachers and students at Warringa Park.

Visit HP’s website to learn how the HP DesignJet can help your school create classrooms where every learner is seen, heard, and included.