The Educator issue 3.01

EDUCATORONLINE.COM.AU ISSUE 3.1

ROB STOKES The newly minted NSW education minister on positively impacting schools

THE BIG INTERVIEW Kate Hadwen, PLC Perth

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THE YEAR AHEAD Senior leaders in education talk 2017

SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT Leading in literacy from the top

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EDITORIAL www.educatoronline.com.au MARCH/APRIL 2017 EDITORIAL Managing Editor Iain Hopkins Editor Tim Garratt Journalist Brett Henebery Contributor David Roy Production Editors Roslyn Meredith Bruce Pitchers

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LOOKING BACK… AND FORWARD

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ast year was punctuated by a plethora of significant events around the world.

It was a year that saw Britain vote to leave the European Union; it was a year that saw both Brazil and South Korea impeach their presidents; it was a year that saw Rodrigo Duterte ascend to the presidency in the Philippines (and quickly become a controversial figure around the world); and it was the year of a failed coup attempt in Turkey, to name just a few.

Arguably, the international news grabbing more headlines around the world than all else was Donald Trump’s shock victory in the 2016 Presidential Election, which saw him become the 45th president of the United States.

At home, 2016 was the year that saw Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull returned to the top job in July’s federal election, as well as the year in which

As we edge towards the end of the first quarter of 2017, what lies ahead for Australian schools? a royal commission was announced into juvenile detention in the Northern Territory, following an explosive report on ABC’s Four Corners program.

On the sporting front, Australia took home eight gold medals at the summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the Western Bulldogs emerged victorious in September’s AFL Grand Final, and the Sharks capped off their season by winning the NRL Grand Final.

And it goes without saying, of course, that educators and schools around the nation experienced their own share of challenges and impressive achievements. So, as we edge towards the end of the first quarter of 2017, what lies ahead for Australian schools?

In this issue of The Educator, we bring you our new feature, ‘The Year Ahead’, for which we canvassed the thoughts of eight commentators, including principals, tertiary educators and legal professionals. We asked them to share with us the issues that will be on their minds in 2017, as well as the exciting work they look forward to undertaking.

PLC Perth’s Kate Hadwen talks about her passion for education and working to ensure student wellbeing, NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes talks about making an impact on the state’s education system, and we take a closer look at the results of the recently released Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey report.

I look forward to spending my own year ahead keeping you updated on the issues in education that you need to know.

Tim Garratt, editor

Copyright is reserved throughout. No part of this publication can be reproduced in whole or part without the express permission of the editor. Contributions are invited, but copies of work should be kept, as The Educator magazine can accept no responsibility for loss

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MARCH/APRIL 2017

CONNECT WITH US

CONTENTS NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes was recently appointed to the job. He talks to The Educator about the positive impact he hopes to have on the state’s schools

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twitter.com/TheEducatorAU www.facebook.com/TheEducatorAU

UPFRONT

COVER STORY

A VISION FOR SCHOOLS

Got a story, suggestion, or just want to find out some more information?

01 Editorial

Looking back… and forward

38 FEATURES

STEPPING UP TO THE PLATE

Contemplating a move from deputy up to the top job? Smart Teachers’ Tyson Wood offers some advice

04 The data

A report reveals startling statistics concerning the health and wellbeing of Australian principals

06 News analysis

Educators respond to the latest principal health and wellbeing findings

08 L&D update

How do we address the most pressing issues in Australian education today?

10 Technology update

Fuelling the levels of female engagement with ICT

12 Head to head

Do students need to wear a school uniform?

16 PEOPLE

ALWAYS LOOKING FORWARD PLC Perth principal Kate Hadwen talks about student wellbeing and staying focused on the future

14 Opinion

Independent accountability and a separation of the Ministry from the Department of Education is needed now

FEATURES 32 The many faces of innovation

How technology is being used in Australian schools to support different teaching pedagogies

46 Maximising engagement, minimising inefficiency

Edval’s Timetabler-in-Residence service takes the pain out of timetabling

20 FEATURES

THE YEAR AHEAD

Eight commentators in education talk about what’s on the cards for 2017 and what they’d like to see happen in the sector

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FEATURES

LEADING IN LITERACY FROM THE TOP The Principals as Literacy Leaders program at Sydney’s Monte Sant’ Angelo Mercy College

PEOPLE 54 Career path

Principal John Goh has overseen enormous change over the past decade at Merrylands East Public School

56 Other life

Principal Glen Carter and Film by the Sea

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FEATURE / BROKER EDUCATION UPFRONT

STATISTICS

LOOKING OUT FOR LEADERS For six years, an annual report has examined the working conditions of Australia’s senior educators, and its results reveal some troubling realities

THE WORKING WEEK Average working hours have remained stable for Australia’s school principals over the past six years but are too high to be conducive to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. On average, 55% of principals worked upwards of 51–56 hours per week during the school term in 2016, with approximately 27% working upwards of 61–65 hours per week.

MAP LEGEND THE AUSTRALIAN Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey was first run in 2011, born out of rising concerns about the health and wellness of senior educators.

Since that time, around 50% of Australia’s 10,000 principals have participated in the survey. The project is overseen by Associate Professor Philip Riley of the Australian Catholic University, a registered psychologist and former school principal himself.

The unfortunate news to emerge from the

5,247

responses were collected from school leaders over the six years of the survey

59%

of responses came from primary school educators while 26.1% came from secondary

73.7%

of responses came from government school educators (14.7% Catholic, 11.5% independent)

THREATS OF VIOLENCE

ACTUAL VIOLENCE

The report highlights that an alarmingly high number of principals have received threats of violence. In 2011, 38% of survey participants reported having been the subject of threats. In 2016, that figure rose to 44%, or almost one in two principals.

Also disturbing is the rise in reports of actual physical violence. In 2011, the national average was approximately 27% of survey respondents, but it’s up to around 34% in 2016 (or just over one in three principals).

Northern Territory New South Wales Victoria Queensland South Australia Western Australia Tasmania Australian Capital Territory

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68.4%

of responses came from principals while 27.6% came from deputy/assistant principals

1 = less than 10 hrs 2 = 10–24 hrs 3 = less than 25 hrs 4 = 25–30 hrs 5 = 31–35 hrs 6 = 36–40 hrs 7 = 41–45 hrs 8 = 46–50 hrs 9 = 51–55 hrs 10 = 56–60 hrs 11 = 61–65 hrs 12 = 66–70 hrs 13 = more than 70 hrs

latest report is that working conditions are continuing to decline for principals in many Australian states. It shows that since the last survey there’s been an increase in workloads, sexual harassment, threats of violence, occurrences of actual violence and bullying.

The report cites the two greatest sources of stress – which have remained consistently high over the history of the survey – as sheer quantity of work, and lack of time to focus on teaching and learning.

% of respondents reporting threats in 2016

Increase on % reported in 2011

55.14 44.31 42.26 38.27 43.61 47.58 46.97 51.79

13 53 12 2 DECREASE by 3 15 54 44

Northern Territory New South Wales Victoria Queensland South Australia Western Australia Tasmania Australian Capital Territory

% of respondents reporting threats in 2016

Increase on % reported in 2011

53.27 32.78 29.27 29.84 36.12 38.18 39.39 48.21

27 53 17 6 13 19 51 56

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THE SOLUTION? Western Australia

Northern Territory

Queensland

6.97

7.84

7.56

The report includes 15 recommendations, repeated from the 2015 report, which include action items for the various stakeholders responsible for ensuring the quality of Australian education. Additionally, it lists four strategies aimed at policymakers and designed to achieve an improvement in both working conditions and learning conditions.

Strategy: Improving the wellbeing of principals and deputy/assistant principals through professional support

A

New South Wales

7.61

South Australia

Australian Capital Territory

7.39

7.73

B

Victoria

7.65

NATIONAL

7.55

Strategy: Professional learning

According to the report, there’s a significant need for skill development in the emotional aspects of leadership

Tasmania

7.74

Approximately 43 hours per week

The report says the survey findings clearly point to the benefits of professional support for all principals and deputy/assistant principals

Strategy: Review the work practices of principals and deputy/assistant principals in light of the job-demands-resources model of organisational health

C

ADULT–ADULT BULLYING Instances of adult–adult bullying were reported by around 36% of respondents, again up in number (from around 34% of respondents). This equates to between 4.1 and 4.3 times higher than in the general population.

Northern Territory New South Wales Victoria Queensland South Australia Western Australia Tasmania Australian Capital Territory

% of respondents reporting threats in 2016

Increase on % reported in 2011

29.91 43.56 33.46 32.57 36.12 27.64 51.52 44.64

32 9 12 DECREASE BY 4 DECREASE BY 4 DECREASE BY 21 31 DECREASE BY 8

The level of job demand reported by survey respondents is dangerous to principals’ long-term health and wellbeing

D

Strategy: Address bullying and violence

The report identifies an urgent need for an independent authority to be established to investigate adult–adult bullying, threats of violence and actual violence in schools Source: The Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey 2016

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FEATURE / BROKER EDUCATION UPFRONT

NEWS ANALYSIS

STARTING A NATIONWIDE CONVERSATION Education leaders around Australia have reacted to the recently released Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing report.

Several have endorsed its call for a national response

THE FINDINGS of the 2016 Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing report paint a disconcerting picture of some of the issues confronting principals across the country.

The Australian Secondary Principals’ Association (ASPA) has released a statement calling for a national conversation, at all levels, to address the issues raised in the report.

Rob Nairn, executive director of ASPA, said many of these issues were entrenched in the wider Australian culture and that a long-term focus is essential for sustained improvement.

“This is not a time to look for quick fixes – we need a holistic enquiry approach to address these issues,” Nairn said.

“We must invest in our next-generation leaders and ensure they are well prepared to handle the demands and stresses of this challenging role. This requires a shared focus and dialogue between government, employers, peak bodies and school leaders.”

The Australian Primary Principals Association has (APPA) also responded to the report.

“Managing any school is a complex and demanding task that naturally brings with it a certain level of stress. Principals accept that,” said APPA president Dennis Yarrington in a statement.

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“However, when the stresses are so great that they impact adversely on personal health it cannot be good for principals, staff, students or parents, and could well see serious consequences down the track.”

Yarrington added: “We also need to reverse any trend that being a principal means abuse, threats or assaults. It’s simply unacceptable.

Measures must be in place to give a clear message of what is acceptable and what is not.

APPA calls on all education ministers and employers to lead this message and then back their principals through action.”

Chris Presland, president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council (NSWSPC), said govern­ments and departments didn’t seem to understand the severity of the problem of principal workloads.

“The volumes of work and the expectations of what should be done have reached an absolutely unrealistic level. Governments and departments need to back off a little bit on some of the reform agenda they’re rolling out,” he said.

“In 2016, in particular, the department rolled out a number of tools that were meant to assist principals with local management, and without exception they all had major implementation problems. That caused us enormous frustration.”

A national effort Associate professor Philip Riley of the Australian Catholic University, the lead author of the report, told The Educator he had been working with the Teachers Health Fund to organise all state departments of education to meet collaboratively in order to discuss solutions to the problems highlighted by the report.

“We need to share what works, because while Australia’s regional areas might have differences in approach, there aren’t any general differences between the states and territories themselves,” Riley said.

“A whole-of-government approach is the best way to address these issues that are affecting principals around Australia.”

Riley referred to the “inexorable upward trend” of offensive behaviours. He also said he found increasing reports of stress as a result of the mental health issues of students and staff alarming.

“This is consistent across every system and every state and territory,” he said.

But Riley also noted that principals, even collectively facing these substantial challenges,

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showed great dedication to, and enthusiasm for, their profession.

“Principals are remarkably dedicated people. Despite all of these problems, they’re saying they get a lot of satisfaction out of the job and have high commitment to the workplace. This message doesn’t get lauded enough.”

In addition to the alarming trends observed, the report also shows some states making progress with respect to reducing incidents of violence and bullying against principals.

Some positive moves Riley highlighted figures for Western Australia and South Australia that showed both states had worked hard to improve principal health and wellbeing over the past two years.

“These states have done an awful lot in the past couple of years to address these issues.

The Education Department of Western Australia was particularly responsive in terms of listening to what I had to say while I was there,” he said.

According to the report, there was a drop of 21% in bullying-related incidents in WA

involving principals, as well as improvements recorded in the ACT (8% decrease), Queensland (4% decrease) and SA (4% decrease).

Peter Beckingham, federal president of the Australian Principals Federation and principal of Halls Head Primary School, was heartened by the reported drop in bullying incidents in WA. He also encouraged

challenges of daily life as a school leader.”

The report also revealed that SA principals experienced a 3% drop in threats of violence.

“South Australia has also been very proactive and decided that it wanted to be the wellbeing state,” Riley said.

“They’re attacking these issues at a wholeof-government level, not just in schools.”

Meanwhile, Tasmania has seen a 14.23% fall in threats of violence over the past year.

“As an association our fervent hope is that this is the first indication of a rapidly reversing trend,” Malcolm Elliott, president of the Tasmanian Principals Association (TPA), told The Educator.

“It saddens me to report that there are principals currently away from work who are struggling to return because of their experience of issues that surfaced in the report.”

Elliott also said that at a political level the TPA was seeking leadership from its elected representatives.

“We want this to translate into practical operational actions as well as policy,” he said.

Chris Presland said the NSWSPC was helping principals to deal with stress and burnout through learning programs.

“We’re providing a lot of professional learning programs in relation to how principals can maintain a healthy lifestyle. We’re also providing and expanding our direct support, which are our professional support officers, for principals,” Presland said.

“These support officers work confidentially

“A whole-of-government approach is the best way to address these issues that are affecting principals around Australia” Philip Riley, Australian Catholic University principals to maintain strong networks with their peers and communities.

“Principals need to continue to develop strong and healthy alliances with their communities and focus on building a strong network among colleagues and their professional associations,” he said.

“More than ever before, a sense of connection and trust is imperative for a leader to be able to cope with the complexities and

with principals who are often not coping, and provide one-on-one support that is funded by our membership. That service is expanding because principals are working at full throttle.”

Industry consensus is that action must occur to ensure that the wellbeing of Australian principals is better protected. So, will a national conversation develop that effectively kicks off that effort?

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FEATURE / BROKER EDUCATION UPFRONT

LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT

ACADEMICS ARGUE FOR REFORMS A new report highlights the issues with the status quo in our education system and suggests a fix

achieving effective collaboration between governments and school sectors in our federal system.”

The pair said “highly inequitable funding settlements”, established over many decades, “continue to entrench privilege in elite schools, while consistently failing to provide ‘needsbased’ funding to schools and young people who need the most support”.

“We continue to replicate a system in which key indicators of impact and equity are stagnating or going backwards” Two Victorian academics have sought to address what they believe are the most pressing issues in Australian education today.

In a paper entitled “Educating Australia: Challenges for the Decade Ahead”, Tom Bentley, principal adviser to the vice chancellor at RMIT University, and Glenn C Savage, senior lecturer in education policy at the University of Melbourne’s Graduate School of Education, highlight the lack of improvement when it comes to the number of students completing Year 12, as well as state and federal funding policies that, they say, “entrench sectoral division and elitism”.

NEWS BRIEFS

“The national reforms since the mid-2000s were designed to address many of these persistent issues,” Bentley and Savage wrote in an article recently published on The Conversation.

“Yet somehow, despite hard-fought political battles and reforms, and the daily efforts of system leaders, teachers, parents and students across the nation, we continue to replicate a system in which key indicators of impact and equity are stagnating or going backwards.”

They continued: “The school funding impasse exemplifies this problem. The policy area is continuously bedevilled by the difficulties of

Studies show benefits of inclusive education Research shows children with a disability thrive in the mainstream school system. Studies by Children with a Disability Australia and the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth say bringing together mainstream and special education students creates profound benefits for both.

Meg Clement-Couzner, Family Advocacy’s senior systemic advocate, said evidence “overwhelmingly shows that students with disabilities have poorer academic and vocational outcomes in disability-specific settings, compared to those who are included into regular educational settings”.

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Consequently, they said, educational opportunities and outcomes are becoming further polarised.

Bentley and Savage support “a coherent reform narrative” genuinely reflecting evidence of the nature of effective learning and teaching.

“Ultimately, the future success of Australian school-age education hinges on whether powerful ideas can be realised in practice, across tens of thousands of classrooms and communities,” they said.

“If we want reforms to be effective, their design must be grounded in wide-ranging dialogue about the nature of the problems and evidence about what will help to solve them.”

ACARA launches financial literacy resource The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) now supports the teaching of consumer and financial literacy in schools. A resource has been developed in partnership with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Australian Taxation Office. It means that teachers can develop educational programs on topics including budgeting, navigating the ever-changing consumer and financial landscape, consumer rights and responsibilities, and where to go for assistance.

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Q&A

EVALUATING EDUCATION Kristin Anderson Senior director of global consulting and evaluation CORWIN

Fast fact Kristin Anderson has worked in multiple K-12 settings in various instructional and administrative roles, and has advanced degrees from Sterling College, the University of Denver, and the University of Colorado.

Can you provide an overview of John Hattie’s research?

In 2008, John Hattie published a collection of research that he had been amassing for over a decade in a book called Visible Learning. Essentially, he collected research to determine the impact of practices that we employ as educators on student achievement so that educators didn’t have to be in a situation where they were guessing or feeling if something was making an impact, but they would have evidence to know if they were making an impact. He looked at 150 practices across teaching, learning and leadership to determine if those practices actually caused a student to get one year’s growth over one year’s time, which is our mission for every child; if they caused more growth or, maybe, if they didn’t give us as much impact as we hoped they would.

He published the results of the research that he collected under those 150 practices in the book Visible Learning … He looked at the practices of the leader, the teacher, the learner, the curriculum, the school and the home in this collection of 150 practices in the research … The research has evolved from that initial 2008 publication of 150 practices to where we stand today [with] over 230 practices looked at across teaching, learning and leadership, over 65,000 studies and almost half a billion students studied worldwide.

Can you tell me about Visible Learningplus?

What gets us the highest results on student achievement and the greatest effect is when we empower students to own their own learning journey. When students are able to answer three essential questions – how am I going, where am I going, and where to next; when they are able to have the dispositions of a learner or those effective habits of thinking and doing; when they have processes for learning; when they have assessment

capability to actually be able to unpack their assessment results and set goals for themselves, and are able to make progress towards those goals; and when they give, speak, act upon and receive feedback; and when those things are operating in conjunction, along with inspired and compassionate teachers causing those learners, the growth is off the charts …

The Visible Learningplus program’s goal is to help empower schools and systems to create these learners and to unpack the essential ingredients of a Visible Learning school and a Visible Learning system to be able to cause this type of learner and put learning where it should be – through the eyes of the student and in the hands of the student, with the teacher being a brilliant creator and facilitator of an environment that creates this empowerment, but is not the one who owns the learning, [rather] one who scaffolds it beautifully.

Can you talk about the feedback of teachers to Visible Learningplus?

I’ve been around professional learning for over a decade … and I can tell you, hands down, that educators respond to this professional learning in an extraordinary way, beyond anything I’ve ever seen in response to professional learning.

I was a teacher and a school leader myself, and if there’s one thing I could go back and do over again, it would be to try to cause these types of empowered learners.

Teachers see immediate growth, they see gains, they see efficacy, they see progress, and it is incredibly uplifting and empowering. And not only do they see that from a qualitative perspective, within short periods of time, over the first year of implementation, but then they also see it from a quantitative perspective, starting in Year 2 and beyond, where they see changes in assessment, changes in scores, changes in achievements because of what they are causing.

Health program aimed at creating better learners

Stronger focus on STEM needed, says report

Integrated services provider Spotless has launched its ‘Nudge’ program, which encourages students to make good lifestyle choices. Developed in collaboration with Nutrition Australia, the program uses food that enhances energy and focus levels, mood and the ability to learn, and also encompasses a suite of physical and emotional wellbeing seminars. “The great thing about the Nudge program is that we can adapt it to suit the requirements of different schools,” said Judith Blinkhorn, general manager of food services and education at Spotless.

A study released in January at the World Economic Forum highlights the need for a heightened focus on STEM education in Australia. Commissioned by technology firm Infosys and surveying 1,600 business leaders across the globe, the report found that Australian businesses are spending big on artificial intelligence (AI) technology, having invested an average of $6m last year, second only to the US. But it also revealed that Australia ranks last when it comes to accessing the skills needed in order to deploy AI technologies.

Partnership formed to boost student literacy It is hoped that a first-of-its-kind evaluation will improve literacy and help Year 1 students in Australia to catch up, amid concerns arising from the recently released Programme for International Student Assessment results. A partnership has been formed between the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Program Evaluation. That partnership will involve evaluating an early intervention program called MiniLit, targeting children in the bottom 25% of readers at the start of Year 1 to help improve their literacy skills.

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FEATURE / BROKER EDUCATION UPFRONT

TECHNOLOGY NEWS BRIEFS Videoconferencing removes learning barriers A top Victorian private school has recently made the move towards wider delivery of classes across its campuses via videoconferencing. Leigh Morrow, acting chief digital officer at Haileybury, told The Educator the technology had the power to remove boundaries to students having a better education.

“We have one master teacher who is proficient in Latin and classics and is now able to teach these classes to kids in remote sites,” Morrow said, adding that all that is required is PC Lab with a camera and headphones.

Green light for new P-TECH schools The Federal Government recently announced it would support the foundation of a further 12 Pathways in Technology (P-TECH) schools across Australia. The Skilling Australia Foundation has been contracted by the government to establish the new pilot sites, located in NSW, Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania. At P-TECH, students undertake an advanced STEM learning program with support from the school’s industry partners.

The programs match each student with an industry mentor and provide opportunities for them to connect their learning to real-life applications.

Warning about students’ online behaviour Research by the Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner reveals that children as young as eight are sharing their surnames, school details and uniforms, phone numbers and street addresses on their social

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media accounts. Last June, the Office undertook a national survey of children aged eight to 13, teens aged 14 to 17, and parents who use the internet.

A spokesperson for the Office, Julie Inman Grant, told The Educator that principals could help promote a safer internet for students by implementing online safety education modules, early and regularly, in classrooms.

Cyberbullying a growing issue for schools Cyberbullying remains a major concern for schools around the country, with parents and schools being urged to combat the issue by intervening early.

The national Schoolyard to Screen survey, conducted by the Telstra Foundation and Project Rockit, found that one in five teenagers experienced cyberbullying during the month prior to that survey. Additionally, a recent survey by ReachOut of 14- to 25-year-olds revealed that a quarter of respondents had been victims of bullying over the previous 12 months, with 25% of those incidents occurring in the online space.

Workshops have delivered results, says principal A Sydney high school principal has attributed a drop in cyberbullying within the school to its anti-cyberbullying workshops. Chris Presland, principal of St Clair High School, told The Educator that for the last two years the school has run the workshops for both students and parents. “We’ve had workshops for parents around how to monitor and supervise their child’s online activity, but also discussing their own online behaviour,” he said.

“Since these workshops, there has definitely been a decline in the number of cyberbullying incidents.”

PROGRAM TO CREATE DIGITAL DIVAS A team of university researchers has been working to heighten female engagement with ICT A new program has been designed in an effort to ensure girls aren’t left behind in education for the workforce of tomorrow.

Digital Divas is a single-sex elective offered to female students in Years 8, 9, 10 and 11, aiming to reverse the information and communications technology gender gap and enhance the allure of an ICT career for young women.

Adjunct Professor Julie Fisher from Melbourne’s Monash University developed the program, along with four other members of her own faculty, as well as researchers from Swinburne University and Deakin University.

The initiative started at Bartik Secondary School in 2008.

“Over some years, we have researched the broader topic of gender and ICT, given the low number of women studying ICT at university,” Fisher told The Educator.

She said the researchers had observed that the number of women working in ICT had not imcreased over recent decades.

“A key issue is the image girls have of computing and IT as a profession – that it is, for example, ‘geeky’, not creative, just about programming,” she said.

Previous research, according to Fisher, has highlighted that the barriers to young girls contemplating ICT careers are established in lower secondary school, and that how IT subjects are taught has a major impact on girls’ attitudes towards the discipline.

“Research also tells us that an intervention program such as Digital Divas needs to run over several weeks and be taken seriously, such as

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being part of the curriculum. Schools are the ideal place,” she said.

For the Digital Divas program, specific curriculum materials have been developed that are designed to stimulate Year 8 and 9 girls’ interest in IT and their curiosity as to IT career paths.

“An intervention program such as Digital Divas needs to run over several weeks and be taken seriously” “The modules that we developed tapped into the interests of girls, including using their creativity, and allowed girls to work collaboratively,” she explained.

Fisher offered some advice as to how principals could drive greater female engagement in ICT. “The attitude to technology within a school can influence the extent to which students – male or female – will elect to study ICT,” she said.

“We found that our classroom modules, which encouraged group work and creativity and focused on developing a product or output rather than on a computer program in isolation, were particularly engaging for the girls involved.

“School principals play a pivotal role in promoting technology use in schools, and I would encourage them to look at technology training for their staff.”

Q&A

A ROBOTIC REVOLUTION Jonathan Kingsley Product specialist THE BRAINARY®

Fast fact Based in Melbourne and founded in 2003, The Brainary® is an international distributor of educational resources covering preschool to elderly care. Its resources include assistive technology, games, books, posters, counselling programs and consulting services.

To book a workshop, visit www.brainaryinteractive. com or contact info@thebrainary.com

Precisely what are NAO robots and for how long has the technology been available for use in schools?

NAO is a humanoid robot that is 58cm tall, autonomous, and fully programmable. NAO can be programmed to walk, talk, dance, listen to you, and even recognise your face. Australian schools have been using NAOs for around three years, whilst universities have been working with NAOs for much longer.

Why is it valuable for students to learn to use NAO robots?

NAO’s unique humanoid appearance and disposition offers incredible student engagement and differentiation of student learning. Learning to program with NAO fosters critical and creative thinking, computational thinking, as well as collaboration and communication amongst project groups.

What are the most common applications of NAO robots in classrooms today, and for which age groups?

NAO robots are currently being used with a wide range of age groups, from early learning through to tertiary research. At the most basic level students use an icon-based visual programming interface called Chorégraphe to create their own behaviours (or algorithms). In more advanced applications, students can code using languages such as Python, C++, or Java. Most of the programming that students undertake revolves around human-robot interactions; however, students can also create complex animations and use NAO to process data from its cameras or connect to external databases using APIs to, for example, check the weather or download emails.

How do you expect the technology to continue to evolve in the coming years?

Whilst NAO is already a highly sophisticated robot, it is just the beginning of a broader robotic revolution that is likely to fundamentally change the ways in which we work and live. Robots that resemble Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man are perhaps not as far away as we might think. However, there are more general trends of automation currently augmenting all manner of jobs. As such, it is imperative that students gain an understanding of not only what robots can do and how to program them, but also what their limitations are.

How can principals learn more about NAO robots and the potential for use in their own schools?

Currently The Brainary® is offering a limited number of complimentary 45-minute NAO robot workshops on-site for Australian schools so that principals and teachers can see first-hand how NAO engages students and helps in teaching the Australian Digital Technologies curriculum.

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UPFRONT

HEAD TO HEAD

Do students need to wear a school uniform?

Lauren Rosewarne

Eva Dobozy

Peter Kurti

Senior lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences University of Melbourne

Senior lecturer in the School of Education Curtin University

Research fellow Centre for Independent Studies

I suspect that we’re a while away from these matters entering courtrooms, but I think we’re knocking at the door for these issues to become very bad press for schools. In a world of social media, restricting options for a vulnerable group can effortlessly become a bad news story for a school. It would be in the best interests of schools to get out in front of these issues: to seem progressive, to seem abreast of the political climate, but also to make only incremental changes which won’t seem too renegade and thus won’t ruffle too many feathers. The ‘sanctioned options’ is the approach of most schools now who have a range of options: pants or skirts or dresses. The sticking point however, is that at present these options lists are divided by gender: the skirts and dresses are approved for the biological.

Whether it is parents complaining about the cost of school uniforms, or students complaining about having to remove their nose piercings, the majority of public and private schools have uniform and dress policies with varying degrees of strictness.

I have researched the benefits and downsides of school uniforms and, while there is no conclusive empirical evidence to say whether uniforms are beneficial for formal learning, the way schools conduct rules and enforce policies teaches students more about civics than the curriculum does. Students (and parents) have a right to know not only what a school’s uniform policy is and how it is enacted, but also what it aims to achieve, if it is lawfully enacted, and who can request changes to the policy.

Schools help to prepare students to take their place in society as mature citizens. Equipping them with hard skills like literacy and numeracy is one part of that work. Forming virtues such as civility and self-control is equally important.

Wearing a uniform helps to create a school culture in which tolerance and respect are fostered. Some schools impose strict uniform policies. Students may have to wear a certain kind of hat or cover specific parts of their bodies, reminding them they belong to an identifiable community. Civic duty is a key component of citizenship. Setting standards of dress and conduct in school helps equip students for responsible adulthood, and to shape society for those who come after.

SCHOOL UNIFORMS AS A LIABILITY In 2016, the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission identified school uniform policies as an area in which schools could find themselves vulnerable to legal action. The Commission said that “requiring female students to wear dresses instead of pants may amount to direct discrimination”.

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UPFRONT

OPINION

ADDING TRANSPARENCY Independent accountability and a separation of the Ministry from the Department of Education is needed now, for everyone’s benefit, writes David Roy

THERE IS a dichotomy in the systemic running of NSW education and schools in terms of the separation of responsibility.

NSW has three basic school systems: public, Catholic and independent. However, the issue lies in the lack of separation of government oversight from the public system. Both are one and the same, the Department of Education.

The NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA), while monitoring all three systems, has direct responsibility for dealing specifically with misconduct issues in the independent and Catholic systems. When recent allegations of student abuse were revealed in both public and independent schools by the ABC 7.30 Report, NESA immediately dealt with the independent

as Family and Community Services or indeed even the police, you are informed that the Department of Education investigates itself, usually through the internal section EPAC – Employee Performance and Conduct (www. dec.nsw.gov.au/about-us/how-we-operate/ how-we-handle-complaints).

It is EPAC that decides if a complaint should be reportable and thus investigated, or is only a matter for local area management inquiry. In effect this usually means a principal of a school investigates their own school. It is therefore little surprise to find that often a principal will find little to no fault in how they run their own school.

In August 2016 when the former NSW

Recent Senate inquiries into institutional responses to misconduct, as well as the current Royal Commission, have shown the dangers of systems that self-regulate and the potential for systemic cover-up school, while the Department of Education was left to internally investigate itself.

Recent Senate inquiries into institutional responses to misconduct, as well as the current Royal Commission, have shown the dangers of systems that self-regulate and the potential for systemic cover-up. Public schools investigate themselves, and the concern is that too often they appear to find themselves at no fault.

If you contact any outside authority such

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education minister, Adrian Piccoli, released information on cases of reportable conduct, multiple families and teachers found their reports of serious abuse and assaults on children were not listed as reportable. If the internal investigative body, EPAC, does not find unexplained bleeding to faces and adult bruising of children reportable there is clearly a problem in accountability and potential systemic cover-up that needs to be challenged.

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Recent media reports of the treatment of children in schools have alluded to concerns about this being the case within the NSW public school system. With the long-desired change of the Minister for Education, the time is now right to make a fundamental change in the monitoring and accountability of the public school system.

There is a valid argument that the Minister for Education should be separated from the NSW Department of Education. Currently, if you have an issue with the public school

transparent oversight over all education in NSW, and offer some protection to the Minister from accusations of corruption and cover-up, if ever there were found to be any.

The separation of accountability and investigation is apparent in other systems across the world. The different education systems across the UK are all subject to HM Inspectorate. This creates confidence within the community that the system is robust and trustworthy. Public school uptake is significantly higher in those countries

Separating the Ministry from the Department of Education … allows Parliament to have transparent oversight over all education in NSW system, the highest authority to whom you can complain is the Minister, and thus there will be no independent body until there is a separation between the Ministry for Education and the Department of Education. Too often I have heard allegations of the previous minister referring complaints back to the very people in the Department of Education who the complaint was about. Rob Stokes, the new Minister for Education, has an opportunity to break this cycle of internal collusion.

Such a separation would benefit parents, staff and management, as well as the Ministry.

Removing the conflict of self-interest would mean all parties involved in the complaints process could have a greater assurance of transparency and that the findings are valid.

The current NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Students with a Disability or Special Needs in New South Wales Schools was initiated in part due to the concerns of many over the potential lack of impartiality of investigative procedures for complaints in NSW. While some might argue that the NSW Ombudsman already has such a role, the terms of reference for the Ombudsman are to ensure that procedures are undertaken correctly, not to look at any potential conflicts of interest or lack of impartiality. In addition, separating the Ministry from the Department of Education would allow Parliament to have

where public schools are independently monitored. Having a similar body responsible for this, which is separate to the body that sets the curriculum, allows for the protection of children and staff, as well as for ensuring that curriculum delivery is of a standard to be expected.

Currently in NSW all these areas are meshed so that those that set the curriculum and those that review the quality of teaching are intertwined.

If there is no outside overview, there is the potential for a lack of perspicuity.

As a staff member of the NSW Department of Education in EPAC once said to me when I asked about the lack of transparency in their investigative procedures, “Well, they are transparent to us”.

Children, parents and staff have the right to open and fair protection. The NSW Department of Education investigates itself, and appears to be accountable only internally, just like the Catholic Church. Until there is an independent body to investigate complaints of abuse, no child is safe.

David Roy is a lecturer in education and creative arts at the University of Newcastle. He has extensive experience in education as a department head, adviser, author and speaker.

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PEOPLE

THE BIG INTERVIEW

ALWAYS LOOKING FORWARD Kate Hadwen, principal of Perth’s Presbyterian Ladies’ College, discusses her passion for innovation in education and working to ensure the wellbeing of students, while remaining firmly focused on what lies ahead IN A career spanning more than two decades, Kate Hadwen has traversed Australia. She began her career in primary teaching and has gone on to undertake a vast variety of roles in schools, as well as spending time as a university lecturer and a senior research fellow. Today Hadwen is principal of Presbyterian Ladies’ College, one of Western Australia’s top schools.

Hadwen tells The Educator that she always encourages staff to grab new opportunities with both hands.

“I’ve probably lived that theory,” she says.

“But what’s been incredibly helpful for me is that I taught kindergarten when I first graduated as a primary school teacher and I’ve lectured at university … I taught humanities from Years 8 to 12, and then I taught philosophy to Year 12 … I’m so lucky that when I walk into the primary school here at PLC and I see a Year 3 class, I actually understand what it’s like to teach a Year 3 class … But I also get that when you’re teaching Year 12 – because I’ve done that too – there’s a lot of pressure around results and you really feel like you’ve got such a personal connection with the students because you want them to do well and you’re working so hard for them to get the best results that they can get.”

As much as Hadwen has enjoyed her roles across the education spectrum, she says schools are her passion.

“You get to actually watch young people grow and develop through the years, and there’s something really special in knowing at the end of a year, when you see a group of

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Year 12s go through, that … for some students you know that you have personally impacted on their success or their growth and development. There’s something really special about that that you can’t get in a research environment in a university.”

Hadwen describes herself as someone who tends not to sit in the same place for very long.

“I get into something and I say, ‘Right, what do we need to do here?’ and then I’m thinking about what’s next. I always have a plan of how I am getting to where I want to be next.”

never felt more needed … That was my formative experience in education.”

It was in that first school that Hadwen first became involved in the PeaceBuilders Program, implemented in school communities to foster a culture promoting non-violence.

It’s an organisation she went on to work for nationally.

Hadwen also recalls the opportunity she had to work with the Top End Group Schools in Darwin.

“It was just amazing, I mean absolutely

“We’re an open-entry school and we cater for the needs of every girl, and that’s what differentiates us in the marketplace – we genuinely do take on any student who comes through the door” Back to the beginning Reflecting on her career, Hadwen recalls her first teaching placement in a challenging state school in Queensland.

“I learned more there than I have in lots of places after that,” she says.

“It was a bit of a rude awakening, I have to say, coming from a private school upbringing myself … There were lots of things there that I’d probably really never come across before in my career, so I just loved it. I found it enriching; it was one of those jobs where I

amazing,” she says.

“I think in life, sometimes you feel like you aren’t biased towards something or you work very hard at not being prejudiced and those sorts of things that we like to believe about ourselves, but it’s not until you truly experience being immersed in different communities that you realise your thinking actually probably wasn’t quite right.

“The level of understanding that I gained of Indigenous communities … has benefited me for the rest of my life. So, I’m enormously

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PEOPLE

THE BIG INTERVIEW grateful that I had an opportunity to work so intensively with those schools … I was flying in and out of locked communities, so I was very blessed to be able to go into those very remote parts of Australia.”

Promoting wellbeing Hadwen is passionate about the wellbeing of young people, which she attributes to having worked in boarding schools and having been a boarder herself for many years.

“I loved boarding but my sister absolutely hated it. She suffered homesickness for all of her boarding time and it actually affected her in adult life as well.

“So I became super passionate about resilience … almost immediately when I began as a teacher being on board with the PeaceBuilders Program.”

At PLC Perth, the current Lighthouse project will next year see the opening of a new facility dedicated to promoting the wellbeing of students. On the importance of supporting wellbeing in an educational environment, Hadwen highlights the worrying research around depression and anxiety in young people.

“I just don’t think we can sit on our laurels,” she says.

“I’m really excited about the concept of makerspaces, about the concept of interdisciplinary learning, because what we’ve tended to do in education is teach things in isolation” “When we think about the Lighthouse, we think about it as a community project. We’re not just thinking about the girls here, but we’re thinking about their families, the teaching staff, [and] the future generations of girls that will come to PLC.” Hadwen says that once the research-based program is proven to be effective, the content will become open source.

“We’re not interested in generating revenue from this,” she says. “We’re actually interested in helping young women around the world and helping schools put in place sustainable programs that they can implement as well.

“For us, it’s a bigger project than just PLC. Obviously we’ll do it with excellence here first, but for us it’s a broader agenda.”

TAKING ON CYBERBULLYING Kate Hadwen’s vast experience in education includes four years spent as a senior research fellow at the Child Health Promotion Research Centre at WA’s Edith Cowan University. Over that period, she spent considerable time focusing on the issue of cyberbullying.

So, what would she say is key to successfully addressing the issue in schools?

“The most important thing for me is to ensure that everybody keeps front and centre that it’s human behaviour … it’s not the technology,” Hadwen says.

“Often we think that we need to detach young people from devices or … the technology is to blame. But … it’s actually people who generate the harm through the use of technology.

“What we understand from research is that if you put in place good bullying programs that focus on perpetrators and victims in that space, you will actually also get an effect in cyber. We know that cyberbullying generally starts as a face-to-face incident and then moves online.”

Hadwen says it’s simple things that make the biggest difference.

“Getting kids to think about what they can do for three seconds before they respond to a message has been proven to make an enormous difference in the way that young people respond,” she explains.

“It’s about behaviour change more than the technology.”

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Catering to individuals PLC Perth is consistently one of WA’s topperforming schools, and its Western Australian Certificate of Education results for 2016 saw it ranked second in the state, as the topperforming non-selective school. Additionally, its 15 students who undertook the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program achieved an average score of 94/100.

“What I’m most proud of about PLC is that we’re an open-entry school and we cater for the needs of every girl, and that’s what differentiates us in the marketplace – we genuinely do take on any student who comes through the door. We don’t have any entry tests; we really are an open-entry school, and we work incredibly hard at catering for the needs of all of our girls.”

Hadwen talks about the personalisation of academic programs for the school’s senior students.

“When we ask girls to choose subjects, we don’t get them to do it on a gridline. We just ask them what subjects they want to study, and then we create individual timetables for every student,” she says.

“Out of all of our girls who completed courses last year, we had three girls enrolled doing exactly the same course … They really can tailor and personalise their learning, thinking about where they might head.”

Taking the initiative Hadwen tells The Educator about the next project at PLC after the Lighthouse: an innovation centre.

“I’m really excited about the concept of makerspaces, about the concept of interdisciplinary learning, because what we’ve tended to do in education is teach things in

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isolation,” she says. “We go from a junior school environment, where things are thematic and they’re based on central ideas, and then we move into a senior-school model, where you do maths and then you do science, but you don’t often look at the connectivity between the two.

“What I’m excited about … is ensuring we have projects on the go for young people that are looking at solving challenges and using all of their learning, rather than just compartmentalising their learning so that they can create solutions, because I believe that in the future a lot of the world of work will be contractually based. People will be looking to hire people for short periods of time to produce a product or an outcome, and we need our young people to be problem-solvers, so [we need to be]

after them?, Who will pick them up after school?, Who will go to the parent-teacher nights?’

“It’s OK to have one person with a big career, but when you’ve got two, it’s very difficult.”

The 12-hour day Helping families, specifically those with two parents who meet that description, has been a driver behind another initiative PLC Perth is contemplating – 12-hour school days.

“What I’m trying to do is create an environment whereby our girls can actually see – because it’s being role-modelled through their families – that when you leave school you can have a family and you can have a big career, but you’re going to need some help to

“The world’s such a small place, and if we’re not giving our young people a sense of the world … then we’re really doing them a major disservice” generating an understanding of using interdisciplinary learning to solve problems within a global context.”

She warns: “The world’s such a small place, and if we’re not giving our young people a sense of the world – and that’s who they’re going to be competing against when they graduate – then we’re really doing them a major disservice.”

Asked about the greatest challenges she’s faced, Hadwen talks about the difficulty of juggling her career and being a mother.

“My career choices throughout my life have always been dictated by the needs of my family first,” she says.

“This is the first role I’ve picked up where … I haven’t had to say, ‘How badly will this impact on my family? Therefore, should I be doing it?’ That’s a real challenge for women. I think it still remains one of the greatest challenges.

“It remains that overarching thought of ‘Who will love my children?, Who will look

do that. And I think that’s where schools can do so much more.”

The concept of the 12-hour school day, Hadwen says, is part of a suite of ideas the school is rolling out to support families.

“The idea is that we will have this magnificent wellbeing centre … We’re a 24/7 centre anyway because we have a big boarding house here, so why are we not utilising those facilities? Why are we not saying to parents, ‘We understand if you need to go to work really early that morning; we’ve got a safe and secure place where your child can be’, or ‘We can offer activities into the afternoon’, ‘We’ve got homework centres where your children can stay and do their homework and then you can attend that late meeting; you can pick them up at 7:30 and get home knowing they’ve been fed, they’ve done their homework’.

“It’s just about helping families, in my mind … with the real agenda, I guess, being supporting women in the workplace.”

KATE HADWEN’S ADVICE FOR ASPIRING LEADERS IN EDUCATION Believing in yourself “Have the courage to put yourself forward, even when you feel you might not be ready for something. Have a go, because you’ll learn something through the process.”

A future focus “Constantly be thinking about where you’re heading next … If you’re a head of department and you want to get into a head of senior school [role], think about … the heads of senior school that [you know] – what do they have? Do they have a master’s?

Do they have this experience or that? And get yourself going on it. Start it today so that you’re always preparing yourself for what’s coming ahead.

Coaches and mentors “They’ve been critically important in my journey and will always be critically important for me.

Find somebody who can be your champion, and be respectful of their time, but be prepared to take their open feedback on things that you should and shouldn’t be doing … Listen to their advice, even if it’s not what you want to hear.”

Be prepared to work hard “If you want to get somewhere or you want to do something, be prepared to work hard and be prepared to sacrifice.”

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FEATURES

THE YEAR AHEAD

THE YEAR AHEAD

2016 was another year characterised by challenges and exciting developments in the education space. So what’s on the agenda in 2017?

The Educator asks eight commentators to share their perspectives

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CRAIG PETERSEN is principal of Denison College of Secondary Education in Bathurst and has just been appointed to the newly established board of the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA).

“I am really looking forward to providing a strong voice for educators, with a particular focus on how we can best support schools and systems to deliver highly engaging and effective curriculum,” he says.

“There is a significant need to review curriculum delivery and assessment practices to make sure that we are meeting the goals for education in Australia as articulated in the Melbourne Declaration.”

Petersen tells The Educator about the need for a stronger focus on building students’ capabilities through effective curriculum delivery.

“The delivery of subject content should be the vehicle through which teachers build the capacity of students, not be the end in itself.

Whilst many schools are doing wonderful things with innovative curriculum, there is still a degree of reluctance in some areas to move from content delivery to capability development.

“We need to be teaching children the right things in the right way.”

Petersen expects one of the biggest challenges for the education sector this year to be maintaining focus on student improvement.

“Often the sheer volume of compliance and accountability can be a significant distraction that shifts the focus of our work from what really matters, in terms of driving improved outcomes for students, to accountability and systems compliance,” he says.

“Whilst we, as school leaders, must be accountable and need to make sure that we are compliant with policy, we must, first and foremost, have a relentless focus on continual improvement and providing effective learning for students and staff.

Getting the balance, and priorities, right is critical if we are to develop a more effective model of educational delivery.”

Petersen also says that the focus must remain on adopting an effective needs-based funding system across Australia, consistent

THE PRINCIPAL’S PERSPECTIVE

CRAIG PETERSEN Deputy president NSW Secondary Principals’ Council

with the recommendations of the Gonski funding review.

“This is critical if we are to reduce the impact of disadvantage on our children and ensure that young people have the opportunity to reach their potential, regardless of their family background and personal circumstances,” he says.

On the professional development front, Petersen looks forward to the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council Annual Conference to be held in Sydney in June.

“This year’s theme is STEAM and will provide an appropriate focus on science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics. The three-day program is packed with exciting and relevant workshops and high-quality presenters,” he says.

Petersen also praises the work of Simon Breakspear.

“We have just completed the first workshop

in his ‘High Impact Leaders of Learning’ program,” he says. “[These were] two fantastic days focusing on processes to identify and implement strategies that are likely to have a high impact on driving student improvement.

We will be following this up with a second workshop in May.” Petersen emphasises the invaluable support that network collaborations and professional associations provide, and says their importance should not be underestimated.

“The worst thing that educators and school leaders can do is to become professionally isolated. This is a particular danger in the increasingly frenetic world of education.

Connections with like-minded professionals are essential in continuing to develop our skills and understandings,” he says.

“If you do nothing else, join your local professional association.”

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FEATURES

THE YEAR AHEAD

THE PRINCIPAL’S PERSPECTIVE

KAREN SPILLER National chair Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia (AHISA)

KAREN SPILLER, principal of St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School in Queensland, was elected national chair of AHISA for 2015–17.

“I have the privilege to serve the profession at the national level. This has allowed me to channel my passion for developing future leaders in new and fruitful directions,” she says.

“I believe it is the responsibility of the profession to raise up the next generation of

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leaders. It is also one of the most important contributions we can make as educators outside of the education of our students.

“I would like to finish my tenure as AHISA national chair knowing that there are talented, eager leaders ready, willing and able to put their hand up for the principalship.”

Spiller is very concerned about the entrenchment of what, she says, might be

termed “deficit model thinking” about schools in media commentary, public debate and government policymaking in relation to schools.

“If left unchallenged, this kind of thinking will undermine public confidence in schools and the morale of teachers. In the meantime, it is giving governments an excuse to disregard educators as valuable contributors to policy development.”

As AHISA’s national chair, Spiller has been calling on governments to change their mindset about schools, to recognise them as “having innovative and entrepreneurial capacity in their own right”.

“I would really like to see some evidence of a shift in thinking and greater trust in the profession in 2017,” she says.

On the subject of major challenges for the sector, Spiller says a key concern expressed by AHISA members is the increasing prevalence of mental health issues affecting students.

“Research is telling us that anxiety about body image is affecting children – both boys and girls – at earlier ages. Young people are identifying anxiety more generally as a concern, and the incidence of children being diagnosed with depression is increasing,” she says.

Spiller also mentions the crucial role of schools in keeping parents apprised of issues, including drug and alcohol abuse and cyber safety, and in working with parents to help keep children and adolescents safe.

“A big challenge in 2017 will be to further develop the home-school partnership to address issues of student wellbeing,” she says.

Spiller tells The Educator AHISA will be monitoring the progression of the Federal Government’s proposal for a national principal certification program. She says the association would prefer a focus on leadership preparation and mentoring for newly appointed heads.

“We have proposed that a scheme to certify preparation courses for aspiring leaders would be of more benefit than certifying aspiring leaders,” she explains.

“No certification scheme can guarantee that a principal is fully prepared for every contingency, but a mentoring scheme which gives new principals access to in-time advice and support would help bridge the gap between professional learning and professional practice.”

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EDUCATING INDIGENOUS STUDENTS: BRIDGING THE GAP Spiller says it’s not only new principals who need support.

“Education is not immune from the change and disruption that is affecting other sectors, and in independent schools heads are finding they must develop the capacity to lead through uncertainty, just like CEOs in corporations. Being able to draw on the counsel of experienced colleagues is becoming increasingly important for principals, and professional associations of principals will be looking for new ways to facilitate this.”

Spiller also offers a word of advice to those thinking of one day becoming principals.

“Make 2017 the year in which you say yes to taking on an extra responsibility, especially one involving lots of interaction with parents.

Relationship skills are a key component in the principal’s toolkit, and it is never too early to start acquiring them.”

Karen Spiller tells The Educator that no Australian educator should take their eye off the achievement gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

“By Year 9, the achievement gap for Indigenous students living in remote and very remote regions could more accurately be described as a chasm,” she says.

“I am a member of the board of Yalari, a notfor-profit organisation whose scholarship program is having a profound impact on the lives of Indigenous students from regional, rural and remote communities.”

She says her AHISA colleagues are putting in place innovative programs in partnership with Indigenous communities.

“We keep pushing the Federal Government for support to replicate these initiatives. The Prime Minister’s 2017 Closing the Gap report tells us that in 2017 we have to push harder.”

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FEATURES

THE YEAR AHEAD

THE PRINCIPAL’S PERSPECTIVE

BELINDA GIUDICE Principal Canterbury Boys’ High School (NSW)

IN 2016, Belinda Giudice began her role as principal of Canterbury Boys’ High School.

“It has been both an exciting and humbling experience getting to know the students, teachers and families of Canterbury Boys’ High School,” Giudice tells The Educator.

Reflecting on the past year, she says, “A 2016 highlight was leading the school community through external validation aligned to the School Excellence Framework.

“As a beginning principal at a new school, this provided me with in-depth knowledge of school achievements and future directions.”

Giudice is looking forward to strengthening her leadership capacity and consolidating relationships as principal with both her community and the wider education sector.

“This year I have initiated, and I am co-leading, a professional learning network to support newly appointed principals,

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contributing to the provision of high-level and systematic learning for principal colleagues in visible learning at a community of schools and local network level,” she says.

“At the local school level, I am excited to lead curriculum provision, including the Australian Curriculum and HSC Stronger Standard reforms.”

So, what does Giudice believe will represent the greatest challenges for the education sector in 2017, particularly those of concern to principals?

“Recent longitudinal national research on principal wellbeing and work intensification highlights increasing concern for the wellbeing of school leaders,” she says.

“The complexity and increased frequency of identified mental health issues within student and wider school communities is also a challenge and can be better supported with additional

needs-based funding support for students with disabilities and increased professional learning support for school communities.”

Talking about developments she’ll be monitoring in times ahead, Giudice says, “I’m particularly interested in the NSW Education Standards Authority’s Stronger Standards HSC reforms as HSC syllabus planning will occur this year for 2018 implementation. In addition, there is a strong school and system focus on the NSW Premier’s targets for literacy and numeracy.

“I am excited by the planned changes in HSC assessment and the focus on studying ‘depth’ of content rather than ‘breadth’ of topics covered. This will provide students with greater opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and skills.”

Asked about specific educators or institutions undertaking work that especially impresses her, Giudice mentions the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (CESE).

“The CESE provides sound evidence to inform policymakers and educators. I am impressed by the Effective Practices in Teaching and Learning website [cese.nsw.gov.au/effective-practices/] and the ‘What Works Best’ and ‘5 Essentials for Effective Evaluation’ guides for in-school implementation.

“As a leader, this supports school planning processes by using the appropriate evaluation tools for school improvement.”

And are there any activities Giudice would encourage other educators to participate in because of the valuable development opportunities they offer?

“I have been encouraged to seek professional learning from colleagues, professional associations and system-level support,” she says.

Giudice refers to the website she co-leads on Supporting NSW Department of Education Senior Executive Leaders (seniorexecutiveteamhub.weebly.com).

“The website is expanded as educational reforms are implemented,” she says.

“The website provides extensive professional learning, including school operations, a range of scenarios and case studies reflective of the AITSL’s Australian Professional Standard for Principals.”

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FEATURES

THE YEAR AHEAD

THE TERTIARY EDUCATOR’S PERSPECTIVE

PROF CHRISTINE URE Head of School of Education Deakin University

PROFESSOR CHRISTINE Ure discusses the partnerships that Deakin University has strengthened with schools in recent times.

“This is changing how the School of Education is able to engage in research and development for teaching,” she says.

“We have … established strong partnerships with over 120 alliance schools, [and] we employ a number of teachers who work in schools as site directors to assist our pre-service teachers to develop their teaching and professional knowledge about students and school communities. Site directors engage with academic staff in research, supporting the development of this initiative. This is creating much-needed space to review how we deliver our teacher education programs and how we add value to the work of schools.”

Prof Ure says examples of the impact of that work include the delivery of units of literacy and science curriculum studies on location in schools, with pre-service teachers directly applying their learning in classrooms.

She says the work is particularly focused on schools located in disadvantaged communities and is leading to curriculum change in the university’s initial teacher education programs to ensure that graduate teachers are skilled up appropriately.

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She also talks about Deakin University’s Aspire program.

“The Aspire program enables young secondary school students to come onto campus and experience learning at university.

This program also supports their literacy and numeracy development while on campus and engaged, for instance, [in] experiences with robotics, nursing or science.”

“Schools and higher education providers must keep up with the myriad of social and industrial changes that we are experiencing, particularly the impact of the digital age and the change in workforce needs. Dialogue with schools and their communities through strong partnerships is an important way to keep abreast of these changes.”

Prof Ure says she’d like to see conversation about education focus more strongly on “resourcing the system to build excellence”.

“Issues such as the debate about the Gonski funding need to be resolved so that all schools can move on with the certainty that they are adequately funded,” she says.

“Teachers need support and time for further learning to ensure their knowledge and skills keep abreast of student needs.”

Prof Ure also says more work is needed to support teachers working in high-need communities.

“Higher education funding also needs to improve to support research and innovation that is focused on improving the conditions for learning in schools,” she adds.

And when it comes to challenges ahead for the education sector, Prof Ure refers to the three R’s – regulation, respect for evidence, and resources.

“Education receives much pushback from

“Schools and higher education providers must keep up with the myriad of social and industrial changes that we are experiencing” Prof Christine Ure, Deakin University In 2017, Prof Ure says, the goal of Deakin’s School of Education is to continue refining its thinking around how it can best impact on the work of education communities. She mentions the growing demand for evidence of the impact of the school’s work in teacher education, and says she’s looking forward to building that evidence trail.

“This evidence is vital to keep our eye on the ball in terms of the goals of education and the future of schooling,” she says.

politicians and the press,” she says.

“We need to hear more about the good work of higher education and schools. The broader community needs to be encouraged to esteem the commitment that teachers and academics bring to their work through education.

“The value that education adds to the nation’s economy needs to be more fully appreciated. There is a tendency for education to be undervalued and overregulated.”

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“THE PRINCIPAL Standard and Leadership Profiles, which we developed in consultation with the profession, are already changing the nature of conversations about school leadership and the professional growth of leaders,” AITSL’s Sue Buckley says.

“AITSL is developing a suite of resources for school leaders and education systems that will strengthen existing approaches to principal preparation, particularly around program evaluation, identifying and nurturing talent, and matching learning to an individual’s capabilities, career stage and context.”

And what else is on the horizon?

“Based on the feedback we receive from the profession and the findings of the recent Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey, AITSL would like to explore two particular areas for learning and development this year to help principals meet the challenges of this ever-evolving and increasingly complex job,” Buckley says.

First, she says, the organisation hopes to see more leaders continuing their learning so that improving student achievement is a constant focus for both the leaders themselves and their school communities.

“And, second, we are eager to support school leaders to carry out their roles effectively and also in a way that does not risk or compromise their own health and wellbeing,” she adds.

“Our team continues to develop support resources for this group. I would encourage them to use our Leadership Scenarios, Interactive Leadership Profiles and Leadership Reflection Tool to review and enhance their practice.”

Buckley says AITSL will lead a National Initial Teacher Education and Teacher Workforce Data Strategy this year to unite data on initial teacher education and the teaching workforce.

“This project brings together existing information from initial teacher education and state-based teacher workforce data, along with that from other sources,” she explains.

“This consolidated data will provide insights into, and a ‘big picture’ view of, the Australian teacher workforce.

“Ultimately, the resource will help governments and sectors to improve their

THE LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE

SUE BUCKLEY General manager – teaching and school leadership Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL)

collective understanding about how teachers are being prepared to teach and how effectively, where they are teaching, what they are teaching, and identify the gaps.

“In turn, this will help inform investment decisions and drive improved outcomes for students.”

Buckley discusses a collaboration between AITSL and Evidence for Learning.

“Evidence for Learning is implementing the Teaching and Learning Toolkit in Australia, which summarises the global evidence base for different approaches that will lead to effective practice in schools,” she says.

“We are partnering with them to develop resources on feedback, which is known to have a very high impact on learning. Students in a class where high-quality feedback is provided can be expected to make, on average, eight months more progress over the course of a

year compared to another cohort who are performing at the same level without the feedback intervention. We’re already seeing exciting examples of good feedback practice in Australian schools.”

Buckley refers to the soon-to-be-released Self-Assessment Tools on AITSL’s website.

“The tools are aligned with the Teacher Standards and Principal Standard, so they will underpin a standards-based approach to development across schools,” she says.

“We believe that the group functionality of both tools will strengthen and support collaborative networks within and between schools.”

She also encourages school leaders to alert their beginning teachers to the existence of AITSL’s new My Induction app.

“They can register at aitsl.edu.au/induction to access the app on Apple and Android.”

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FEATURES

THE YEAR AHEAD

THE LEGAL PERSPECTIVE

DAVID FORD Senior partner Emil Ford Lawyers

LAST YEAR, David Ford, senior partner at Sydney’s Emil Ford Lawyers, worked with around 500 educators at seminars to provide guidance to school leaders as to how their schools should deal with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students.

“This year, I am hoping to build on last year’s work by visiting schools to dialogue with their executive staff about the particular issues they are having with LGBT students. I’ve already done this with several schools,” Ford tells The Educator.

Asked to cite major challenges or changes on the legal and regulatory front that may confront Australian educators in the near future, Ford discusses the potential impact of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The Commission is expected

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to complete its work by the end of 2017.

“The Commission’s final report is almost certain to recommend changes to the regulatory regime for child protection throughout Australia,” Ford says.

“If the recommendations are adopted, they will represent a significant challenge for schools throughout Australia. There will be a need to educate staff about the new regime.”

In addition, Ford says, it’s expected that the Royal Commission will provide its report into Case Study 45 by the middle of the year.

“This case study examined student-onstudent bullying involving sexual abuse in some seven schools in New South Wales and Queensland,” he explains.

“The Commission’s findings in this area

may lead to new legislation and are certain to cause schools to re-examine their policies and procedures in relation to bullying and peer-to-peer sexual abuse.”

Ford encourages school leaders to focus on their responsibilities as employers.

“They must take very seriously any hint of impropriety on the part of their staff. They need to know how to deal with such issues fairly while at the same time meeting their compliance obligations,” he says.

“While some independent school principals have HR managers on tap, and public school principals have their departments to turn to, all of them should have a basic understanding of the industrial laws, state or federal, that apply to their school and its employees.”

Ford adds that all of these principals must have more than a basic knowledge of the child protection laws applicable to them and their schools.

“For the sake of their students and themselves, I urge senior educators to pay particular attention to these areas.”

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A QUESTION OF VICARIOUS LIABILITY CLARIFIED Last October, the High Court delivered its judgment in ADC v Prince Alfred College Incorporated.

“It’s always a highlight when the High Court hands down a judgment about a school,” David Ford says. “And this one was especially important.”

He had hoped the Court would resolve the question as to whether a school could be vicariously liable for the sexual abuse of a student by a teacher – and, if so, on what basis – in its 2003 decision in New South Wales v Lepore.

“Unfortunately, all the High Court said in Lepore in 2003 was that it was possible for a school to be vicariously liable in Australia. The High Court then suggested multiple tests to determine whether a school would be liable, and we were all uncertain about which test was correct,” Ford says.

And then finally came the Court’s judgment in ADC v Prince Alfred College Incorporated.

“The Court set out what it considers to be the appropriate test for vicarious liability in sexual abuse cases,” Ford explains.

“Schools are vicariously liable for the acts of an employee committed in the course of employment.”

He stresses that this doesn’t mean that schools are automatically liable when a teacher abuses a student. In cases involving sexual abuse, Ford says courts will consider, firstly, whether the school has assigned the teacher to any special role, as well as the the position in which that role places the teacher in relation to the student. Secondly, it will consider whether the performance of the role can be said to have given ‘occasion’ for the abuse.

“Particular features of the role must be taken into account, such as the authority, power, trust and control of the position and the ability the position gives the teacher to achieve intimacy with a child,” Ford says.

“If a teacher takes advantage of such a role to abuse a student, a court may well find that the abuse occurred in the course of employment.”

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FEATURES

THE YEAR AHEAD

THE ARCHITECT’S PERSPECTIVE

RICHARD LEONARD Director Hayball

RICHARD LEONARD is a director of Hayball, one of Australia’s largest design practices, which is engaged to undertake a variety of education projects.

Leonard tells The Educator the practice has several exciting projects on the drawing board for 2017, but the one to watch will be the new Sandridge School in Melbourne.

“Its vision is to produce global citizens and to be an incubator for innovation and social impact for students and teachers. It is aspiring to provide a transformational education model that is geared to the very different needs of today’s students,” Leonard says.

“The project will establish a new secondary facility for the existing primary school and will be housed within an historic four-storey woolshed … The building itself will co-exist within a fascinating complex, including creative spaces, entrepreneurial initiatives

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and community connections.”

Is there something Leonard would like to see occur in the education sector in Australia with respect to attitudes towards learning spaces?

“The biggest impact we can have – and the very first step we need to take – is the shift in mindset: to agree that change needs to be made and that such change needs to be radical,” he says.

“We desperately need to break out of our current mental models of schools and embrace a more open view – a growth mindset, if you like – to challenge the underlying beliefs of what we think are relevant education and good school design.”

In terms of education thinking, Leonard believes the most exciting trend we’re now seeing is in the realm of neuroscience and understanding how we learn.

“This emerging understanding is shifting the

way we view learning. It is informing teaching practices and, by extension, the design of facilities that support them,” he says.

“I feel the next big thing is AI [artificial intelligence]. To me, this encapsulates the ‘21st century scenario’ that we tend to use to uneasily describe the brave new world of teaching and learning … AI will be the future reality for our kids, and we need to think how we can prepare them for it with our education systems.”

Leonard highlights work being undertaken by a group at the University of Melbourne.

“LEaRN [Learning Environments Applied Research Network], based at the Melbourne School of Design, has combined academia and industry to imagine and discuss contemporary responses to physical learning environments.

From this, several ARC [Australian Research Council] research projects have been initiated, including ‘Evaluating 21st Century Learning Environments’ and ‘Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change’.

“The studies will provide critical research on the effectiveness of contemporary teaching and learning environments – research that is notably scarce worldwide and is vitally needed.”

Leonard’s advice for senior educators considering a rethink of their school’s learning spaces is to be brave.

“Break from the old mindsets of traditional industrial education models and reimagine what will support, nurture and inspire the students and teachers for the 21st century,” he says.

“Think more about the ‘learning experience’ of collaborative and relational education.

From the shift in mindset will emerge very different approaches to education facilities that are more attuned to, and supportive of, contemporary learning.”

Leonard suggests school leaders consider prototyping spaces.

“I’m a huge advocate of constructing prototype spaces for schools to trial, experiment, perhaps even fail – to use the methodology as a cost-effective and accelerated way of breaking away from the ‘same old, same old’. It’s a great way of effecting change, creating excitement around teaching and learning spaces, and promoting different models of education facilities.”

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AIDEN TURNER is a Year 11 student at Merrylands High School in Sydney’s suburbs. He tells The Educator about his career aspirations.

“I would love to be able to study media and film,” he says.

In 2015, Turner participated in YES TV at the Youth Eco Summit at Sydney Olympic Park, a live streaming of the summit that facilitated the inclusion of students across the world.

“I got to be the host of that. I guess you could say that’s where my love for film started to kick off,” he says.

Last year, Turner signed up for Interrelate’s short film festival for NSW high school students.

“That film ended up being one of the top eight in the state,” he says.

He’s also participated in the University of Technology Sydney’s summer school program for high-school students, which he says helped to bring home to him the opportunities of a career in film and media.

Turner also says his awareness of the changing workforce – and the transformation likely to occur as a result of technologies, including robots and 3D printers – has also heightened his interest in a film and media career.

“It’s an evolving workforce,” he says.

He mentions the demand for new content fuelled by streaming services, such as Netflix, and the rising popularity of live-streamed internet broadcasts.

“It is a growing industry that I really would like to get into, and it really affects the way that I view my studies.”

Turner also talks about the technologies that have impacted on his student career, singling out having the ability today to upload textbooks onto a single USB flash drive.

“It saves me a lot of time in the morning getting ready, and it can also really increase the amount of work I can do in a short amount of time,” he says.

“On top of that, I’ve got all the teachers’ email addresses, so I’m able to communicate with them very efficiently. I don’t have to wait until the next day to ask what the answer was to an algebra question. I can ask it in the afternoon, and usually I get an email back pretty fast.”

THE STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

AIDEN TURNER Student Merrylands High School (NSW)

Asked about any concerns he has about the education system, Turner refers to the Higher School Certificate reforms that will require students to achieve a Band 8 or higher in the NAPLAN test in order to be awarded their HSC. He raises the potential impact of the reform on anxiety and stress levels among younger high-school students.

“I have a lot of friends in the younger years, and whenever I try to help them with their studies or give them ideas for the future, they often rebut me with, ‘You have no idea what I have to go through’,” he explains.

He also emphasises the importance of both parents and students having access to the relevant information about the changes.

“If the parents don’t have that information, it can often cause the parents to cause the students stress, so the parents need to know just as much as the students.”

Turner shares his thoughts on how principals can make a real difference to students.

“I think principals really establish the culture of the school,” he says.

“We were really blessed to have Miss [Lila] Mularczyk as our leader of our school.

The culture that she created at Merrylands High School is one that values, promotes and respects the support between teachers and students.”

Merrylands High School has adopted the Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) model.

“The [PBL] model … has massively impacted the way that the classroom works,” Turner says.

He adds: “The best thing about Miss Mularczyk is that she doesn’t just treat me as a student. She actually treats me as a colleague of hers, which makes a huge impact [on] the way that I view school.”

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TECHNOLOGY

THE MANY FACES OF INNOVATION How is technology being used to support different teaching pedagogies being implemented in schools across the country? The Educator investigates TECHNOLOGY CONTINUES its transformation of the world, and its role in the education of students is likely to become more pronounced.

But how do educators prepare their students for life in the world of tomorrow? What will constitute the indispensable skills and abilities required for the workforce of the future?

Since its beginnings, The Educator has highlighted the innovative approaches and practices adopted by educational institutions across Australia. Now, meet three school leaders whose organisations have re-evaluated traditional education programs in their endeavours to offer students a holistic experience. We asked each leader how technology is playing a role in their delivery of innovative education.

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SCHOOL 1: WESLEY COLLEGE (WA) South Perth’s Wesley College is a co-educational, independent day and boarding school which has over 1,500 students from pre-kindergarten right up to Year 12. When it comes to what makes Wesley different, director of strategy Mathew Irving talks about the school’s strategic plan.

“Rather than being an organisationalfocused strategic plan, which most schools in Australia have, it’s a student-focused strategic plan,” he tells The Educator.

“Accordingly, we only have four strategic goals in our plan. We desire for all our students to be strong thinkers, purposeful doers, positive

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connectors and powerful self-activators. For us, these four strategic ‘impact goals’ articulate what we believe to be holistic student success and that idea of lifelong transformation beyond the formal years of schooling.”

To measure its progress against those

attend to our four strategic impacts through the vehicle of these 12 learning habits.”

Technology, Irving says, plays a crucial role in the school’s collection of data.

“We’re using assessment rubrics, selfassessment and self-reporting. We believe this is the best kind of data in terms of ascertaining how our students are going, in terms of growth and performance towards the learning habits.

“We believe that it really needs to be digital so we can aggregate that data, so we can see trends and patterns over time, and we really want our students to gain insights into their individual growth and performance.”

Irving talks about some of the particular technology employed.

“We are currently implementing the use of Schoolbox, with a strong focus for us on continuous reporting,” he says.

“So, through the use of rubrics and ePortfolio, we are hoping that technology will enable us to capture both academic and non-academic evidence, with a focus on our learning habits, that is updated in real time.

That will allow us to move away from that reporting every six months that schools in Australia do, and will enable us to correlate that data between academic and nonacademic elements and prompt rich conversations with our students and parents about learning.”

“We believe that insights are one thing, but they’re only good if you enact long-lasting change. So we have to have a mechanism of actually developing goals” Mathew Irving, Wesley College ‘impact goals’, the school has created 12 learning habits.

“These are 21st century capabilities that focus on work habits, cognitive skills and dispositions,” Irving explains.

“We are, at the moment, collecting student data of these learning habits through summative assessment, self-assessment, selfreporting and self-reflection, so we’re able to

Irving says that as a result of being able to obtain these data insights Wesley College has introduced student-led conferences in which students facilitate a discussion with their parents, tutor or mentor to surface insights from the data.

“That data is around those learning habits.

From there, they develop SMART goals and take steps towards being self-directed,” he says.

TECHNOLOGY TO TRANSFORM K-12 SCHOOLS Schoolbox is an integrated all-in-one virtual learning environment; it’s an LMS, an intranet and a portal.

Schoolbox is a mature, robust and sustainable platform that connects your entire school community and powers innovative teaching and learning.

“We believe that insights are one thing, but they’re only good if you enact long-lasting change. So we have to have a mechanism of actually developing goals.”

Irving says the school is in the early days in terms of gathering “deep insights into the whole college data”.

“We’re hoping, through Schoolbox, we’ll be able to work towards developing more cohort or whole-school analytics to determine our overall progress towards our strategic impact goals,” he says.

“Equally, if we can develop those broader analytics for the college, then our strategic planning is actually going to be better. We’re actually going to be much more deliberate and move towards that evidence-informed decision-making, which … schools talk about but find it hard to actually enact.”

SCHOOL 2: SEDA COLLEGE (VIC) SEDA College provides education to over 800 Year 11 and 12 students studying on 37 campuses across Victoria. Its approach to teaching is all about educating, engaging and empowering its students.

“That underpins everything we do within the organisation,” says Matt Meyers, SEDA College’s eLearning coordinator.

“We provide a different model to most schools. Students complete an intermediate and senior VCAL, along with industryspecific VET qualifications, in either Sport and Recreation or Building and Trade.”

SEDA students prepare career action plans in consultation with advisers or

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teachers, and then the college works with students to provide suitable industry and community-based placements to build on what they learn in the classroom.

Each SEDA College class is assigned to an industry partner.

“That might be a sporting body, so AFL Victoria [or] Cricket Australia [as examples]

“From a teaching perspective, all our marking and assessment is done online.

Obviously, there’s verbal feedback that happens in the classroom on a day-to-day basis, but in terms of the formal feedback, that’s all online through MySEDA.” Technology ensures a consistent experience is delivered to students across

“All our marking and assessment is done online. Obviously, there’s verbal feedback that happens in the classroom on a dayto-day basis, but in terms of the formal feedback, that’s all online” Matt Meyers, SEDA College … The building and trade [classes] are aligned to industry partners too.

“So the students get first-hand experience within the industry when they’re with us. It’s this industry input and experience that really makes the applied learning genuine.”

Meyers says those industry partners play a substantial role in curriculum design, meeting with SEDA staff each year to have input into content creation.

He adds that the college’s holistic approach to education is an endeavour to equip students for future study or to make them job-ready.

According to Meyers, from senior VCAL, around 85% of its students go on to a Diploma of Sports Development with SEDA Group, while approximately 60% progress to university or other further education.

“SEDA Group has guaranteed pathways into some of the major universities in Victoria,” he says.

Discussing the role of technology at the college, Meyers says all of its course content is online.

“We’ve got our own branded platform built on Schoolbox called MySEDA,” he says.

“Everything that the student needs to access their coursework is online … The student has complete access to everything to help them succeed.

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SEDA’s many campuses. Whether students reside in regional Victoria or metropolitan Melbourne, everyone has the same access to resources anytime and anywhere as a result of the connected teaching environment made possible by the MySEDA platform.

A component of the course content available on the online platform is flipped video content, Meyers says.

“It’s learning outside the classroom, where they’ll watch a [short] video that the teacher has created about a certain topic or area of study, so then when they get to class they’ll have a better understanding of what they actually need to do and they can work with their teacher to enhance their knowledge and really build on that with the teacher while they’re in the classroom.”

Meyers stresses that while technology can enhance good teaching, it cannot replace poor teaching.

“The focus is still definitely on the relationship that the teacher has with their students, so we’re by no means an online course, where students don’t need to interact with their teacher or their classmates. It’s still very much an interpersonal environment, but the technology is really enhancing what we’re trying to achieve.

“We’re trying to continually strive to improve what we do, and so far, so good.”

SCHOOL 3: SANDRIDGE SCHOOL (VIC) Sandridge School describes itself as an independent secular school that “inspires extraordinary learning”. Having only opened its doors in 2016, the school will ultimately have students studying from kindergarten/prep right through to Year 12.

“We want our kids to be high-functioning, highly capable human beings in the world,” says Sophie Fenton, acting principal and co-founder of Sandridge School.

“We want them to be consciously, cognitively contributing citizens so that they have an acute, deliberate awareness of their actions in contributing to the world that they live in, at a local, national and global level.”

Fenton says Sandridge also wants students to be entrepreneurial thinkers.

“By entrepreneurial in their thinking I mean their capacity to imagine, to develop new ideas, but then to go through an iterative process and then realise something at the end that is tangible and concrete – in other words, to action their ideas,” she says.

“They’re our key drivers as an education organisation and, because of that, those things shape how we develop our education program.”

A crucial aspect of learning at Sandridge, Fenton says, is its occurrence in an “authentic context”.

“We create learning experiences that allow our kids to understand fundamentally and explicitly what the purpose of that learning is and then locate that purpose within a genuine, real-world context to see how that learning actually operates in the real world,” she says.

“Our kids … get real-world feedback from real-world audiences that give validation to the purpose of their learning and their thinking.”

Fenton emphasises that Sandridge teaches through the Australian Curriculum.

“We actually are mainstream-structured, but how we teach and the reason for our teaching is different.”

Last year, Year 2 students at Sandridge were tasked with creating inventions to resolve tangible problems.

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“They had to go through the design thinking process of an invention … They had to present to an adult panel three times during the term. It was a panel of experts that work in industry around innovation,” Fenton says.

That iterative process culminated in every student presenting their own invention to the panel.

“It was all Australian Curriculum … but through an authentic audience with clear meaning and purpose, the kids buy into their learning and they become learners, risktakers, creators [and] deliverers.”

Fenton talks about the integral role of technology at Sandridge, specifically with respect to the assessment of students.

“We don’t do reporting at the school. We provide feedback,” she says.

“We don’t use any language of grades and standards with our kids … Importantly, we have to understand the standard and we need to know where our kids are at in order to pitch teaching to them, because we differentiate in our practice, but we never use the language with our kids.

“We never dot plot them, report them against standards [or] give them grades.”

Instead, Fenton says, each student is provided feedback on their learning growth

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“Our kids … get real-world feedback from real-world audiences that give validation to the purpose of their learning and their thinking” Sophie Fenton, Sandridge School every three weeks.

“We use the language of growth – ‘How are you growing as a learner?’ ‘Where are you challenged as a learner?’ – and then we give them goals,” she says.

“To enhance the information provided in the report, we include work samples with our feedback so both the student and the parents can see what we are talking about. And that is a far more effective form of providing our parents with information about their child’s learning than a report at the end of a term, which is dot plotting your child, benchmarking them against these arbitrary standards.”

Fenton adds that traditional reporting in schools is post-learning.

“We report during your learning journey so that you can amend your learning journey as you travel.”

Amanda Tawhai, head of Junior School –

Teaching and Learning, describes how Schoolbox is used at Sandridge as a tool to assist in facilitating that feedback on student growth and goals.

“Schoolbox is a tool for us to communicate effectively with our school community and in time, so there’s not a delay. We can post what’s happening in learning studios into blogs and we can put up content in terms of what is happening,” Tawhai says.

“It creates real-time feedback so parents can then join us on the learning journey. And it is this partnership between teacher, parent and student that accelerates student learning we believe. It accelerates student growth.”

Tawhai adds: “We also want our students to understand that technology is a tool you use to connect to the world. We want them to be capable of connecting with experts and be globally connected, as opposed to just using technology for understanding.”

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PROFILE

ROB STOKES

A VISION FOR SCHOOLS Brett Henebery speaks to recently appointed NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes about how he intends to make a positive impact on the state’s schools WHETHER IT’S struggling with surging enrolments in the inner cities, dealing with the mounting backlog of maintenance issues, or combating rising instances of violence against principals, it’s no secret that NSW schools have their work cut out for them.

Perhaps also weighing on the minds of the state’s teachers and principals is the loss of renowned former education minister Adrian Piccoli, who Deputy Premier John Barilaro described as “one of the best in the world”.

Upon taking office as the state’s new premier in January, Gladys Berejiklian said Piccoli had been “outstanding” in education,

“Education is one of the most exciting opportunities we have in government to transform people’s lives from a very early age,” he says.

“As a parent, through my own education and from my experience as a teacher, I understand the positive impact education can have.”

Stokes says he hopes to use that experience to support students, teachers and parents in the opportunities and challenges they face every day.

“It is also really important in this role that I am a listener and a learner myself,” he says.

“Education is one of the most exciting opportunities we have in government to transform people’s lives from a very early age” but added that it was time for “fresh blood” in the portfolio.

“Minister Piccoli has done an outstanding job in education, and after six years I am really pleased that Rob Stokes is stepping up.

Rob Stokes will be a phenomenal minister for education. He is as passionate about Gonski as I am, as Minister Piccoli was,” she said.

In an interview with The Educator, Minister Stokes shares his thoughts about taking on the portfolio, as well as how he intends to make a positive impact on NSW education.

Stokes outlines his top priorities for NSW education in 2017.

“My predecessor, Adrian Piccoli, did an outstanding job as education minister. It is my intention to build on his achievements, including reforms to improve student results, foster quality teaching and provide greater support to students and teachers,” he says.

“We also have a vast demographic challenge ahead of us in terms of the number of school-aged children in NSW.” Stokes points to the state’s booming

population, which is expected to grow by 28% over the next 20 years, with an additional 164,000 public school students in NSW by 2031.

“We need to increase our schools’ capacity to accommodate all those students. That will require new schools, as well as upgrades to increase the capacity of existing ones, and being smart and imaginative in our development solutions,” he explains.

“Though a challenge, having more children in our state is a great thing – and providing greater school capacity is a top priority for me.”

Stokes says he will be pushing for the Federal Government to deliver billions in new funding for NSW schools during ongoing negotiations between the federal, state and territory leaders.

“We have a signed agreement with the Commonwealth Government on the Gonski reforms, in which NSW schools stand to gain $5bn in new funding,” Stokes says.

“The NSW Government led the nation in signing and implementing these reforms, and I will continue to do everything possible to ensure this commitment is met by the Federal Government.”

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FEATURES

RECRUITMENT

STEPPING UP TO THE PLATE Smart Teachers’ Tyson Wood offers salient advice to deputy principals contemplating the move up into the top job

ACCORDING TO social researcher Mark McCrindle, most baby boomers – who currently make up around 25% of Australia’s population – will have retired by 2020.

Tyson Wood, Australian manager of recruitment firm Smart Teachers, highlights the substantial impact the issue will have on senior leadership in education.

“With the baby boom generation retiring, you are having less lateral movers,” Wood says. “There are still a fair number of experienced principals who will change schools in the next few years, but with the baby boomers retiring, there are a lot of deputies that are going to be stepping up into their first headship.”

However, despite that fact, Wood says principalships remain competitive.

“It’s not as easy to get a headship job as it is a middle management job or a teaching job or even a deputy principal job,” he says.

Wood says one thing that is commonly necessary when moving into principalships, but not as common in other leadership positions, is the need for a candidate to relocate.

“A lot of principals … don’t get the promotion internally. They go and get the job elsewhere, and that elsewhere is the other side of Queensland or another part of Australia,” he says.

“You particularly see that in the independent sector.”

It’s important that candidates seeking a

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principalship properly understand the demands of such a role, Wood stresses.

“It’s like when you take a step up from middle management to senior leadership, and then you’re taking the step up from senior leadership to executive headships or deputy to a principal, [there’s] greater complexity [and] greater scope in what you’re responsible for,” he says.

But, at the same time, don’t be deterred from making the move.

“Some people might look to the headship and think, ‘It’s a really big job. It’s far too complex. I’ve already got a lot on my plate’.

“With the baby boomers retiring, there are a lot of deputies that are going to be stepping up into their first headship” Tyson Wood, Smart Teachers But most of the principals that you poll love their jobs. All the clients that I’ve served over the years … have big jobs, a lot of responsibility, great scope to what they’re responsible and accountable for, [and] they all have a high level of satisfaction and enjoyment in the job.”

The right fit So, what specific attributes are synonymous with the ‘best’ candidates for a principalship?

Wood says that’s dependent on the particular school and the nature of the headship.

“In Australia, the role of the principal can be different from one school to the next, and those differences are probably best described by looking at the independent school sector,” he says.

Wood mentions larger independent schools with boarding houses, which provide catering, hospitality and accommodation services and may require a principal to take

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SMART EDUCATION AUSTRALIA

on financial responsibilities that are much larger than in other schools.

“If it’s an independent school, though they align with the government on compliance matters and have the support of their sector authorities, a school council and the principal govern the school independently. The principal thus plays a pivotal role in strategic decision-making and holds the highest level of responsibility when it comes to driving the best balance between education, operational and financial outcomes.”

Wood also mentions building and asset management.

“Some principals don’t have to cover building and asset management other than, maybe, day-to-day observations, making things run, and reporting if there are any

problems. But for other schools the building and asset management includes getting the funding to build new facilities or maintain new facilities. That can be quite large, depending on the size of the school.”

And then there’s the extent of their responsibilities when it comes to the community.

“Although all schools in Australia have to engage their local community, and that will be a mainstay in any principalship job, you may have – in certain schools – a bigger community agenda. Maybe that’s because there’s a lot of alumni or other networks and alliances that one is required to maintain and build on.”

Marketing and advertising responsibilities will also have much greater prominence in some principal roles than others, Woods says.

Smart Education Australia is in its 11th year of service to Australian independent and Catholic schools. Our range of recruitment services cater for the diverse needs of independent schools throughout Australia.

Smart Teachers, our long-standing division, assists schools in the recruit­ment of teachers and support staff. Smart Leaders, our executive and senior leadership division, assists schools and boards in the recruitment of principals, deputy principals, heads of department, directors of boarding and business managers.

Smart offers intelligent advertising and strategic promotion services. Using our database of 140,000 teachers and leaders in Australia and our global – TES-powered – network of over eight million Englishspeaking teachers, we work with schools to expand their reach and attract the most suitable candidates. Smart vetting and appraising is independent school specific and leading edge thanks to our alliance with workplace management and child protection authorities. Our performance and conduct appraising, compliance procedures and education expertise safeguard schools and maximise the benefit of new appointments.

“Some heads oversee much larger marketing campaigns, like independent school principals. There would be big marketing campaigns to profile the school in the national education community, and even internationally if they’re a boarding school, and that’s all to keep [up] the profile of the school and make sure that enrolments are continuing to come in.”

He says it’s these potential requirements that deputy principals looking to move up into principalships must understand.

Having knowledge of how significantly those types of functions will factor in to a

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AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS: THE BREAKDOWN

9,414

6,634

1,738

1,042

Total number of schools in Australia

Total number of government schools in Australia

Total number of Catholic schools in Australia

Total number of independent schools in Australia

Source: Schools, Australia, 2016 – Australian Bureau of Statistics

principalship means candidates can then shape their CVs for specific roles accordingly.

The CV Wood emphasises the importance of getting the CV right.

“The biggest mistake anybody makes – whether it’s somebody applying for a principal job or even a teaching job – is not showing what they’ve done and what they’re capable of doing within the CV,” he says. “[For] a lot of the headship jobs that we work on … it’s easy to decipher what some of the key mandates are … by just reading the job description and the person specifications or researching the school. So people can rework their CV, marrying past experiences with the expectations or objectives of the new role. This will go a long way to show an understanding of how to do the job and in a way that will benefit the role as defined by the school. Mandates include improving or innovating [in] education, they might be strategic leadership or vision, they might be community engagement and marketing, or they might be business, commercial and operational in nature.”

Wood believes that graduate qualifications, such as master’s degrees and doctorates, can give a candidate an edge in their efforts to ensure a principalship.

“If you are having more first-time principals moving into the role, as a school council you’re going to look for things that are going to give you confidence that they’re going to be able to make that big step up and

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acclimatise. One way is looking at their qualifications,” he says.

“You’re seeing a lot more of the deputy principals coming in having a Master of Educational Leadership.”

Wood says that, nationally, the Master of Educational Leadership is the most common qualification Smart Teachers is seeing on the CVs of its first-time principalship candidates.

The overseas opportunity And while aspiring principals may hope to take their first step into the top job on our shores, there’s also the prospect of taking a role abroad. Wood says the international sector is rapidly growing, particularly in Southeast Asia and China. He says

country, where the language might not be English and cultures may be very different.”

Wood says principalships in international schools afford candidates the chance to acquire transferable skills, knowledge and abilities that will be well regarded on their return to Australia.

“A lot of international schools have a lot of similarities to the schools in Australia. If you’re in an Australian international school, they follow local curriculums or a hybrid of those,” he says.

“There is currently a tonne of principals in the international sector who are Australian, who were principals of Australian schools before they went over, [and] a lot of them are coming home now. The positive in that is they’re getting jobs back here. So it shows that you can go there and come back and get a job, but it also means that an Australian principal who’s gone in and done a great job and set a bit of a standard … will make it easier for other Australians to go over and work in these international schools.”

When it comes to professional development, Wood says there’s “never been a better time in Australia” for aspiring principals to engage in further learning activities.

“In every state, you have a number of different authorities or bodies that are

“The biggest mistake anybody makes … is not showing what they’ve done and what they’re capable of doing within the CV” Tyson Wood, Smart Teachers international schools are similarly facing the effects of baby boomer retirement and fewer deputies looking to secure principalships than before.

“They have it even worse because, in addition to trying to attract people to the role, they’ve got to attract people to the location and the great level of change that is required not only in taking up a principalship for the first time but doing it in another

providing aspiring leadership services and leadership development training to complement the aspiring leadership programs that schools are running internally,” he says.

“People just need to hop onto some of the different websites and see the professional development available, and they can get themselves into some courses and that will greatly help them.”

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FEATURE / BROKER EDUCATION SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT

MONTE SANT’ ANGELO MERCY COLLEGE

LEADING IN LITERACY FROM THE TOP Leading improved literacy outcomes is a task often left to teachers, but a landmark program equips principals with the tools they need to drive these changes from the top. Brett Henebery investigates IN 2007, the Labor Government introduced a program calling for pilot projects aimed at closing the literacy and numeracy gap for children from low socio-economic and Indigenous communities.

Three years later, the Federal Government funded 40 such programs. One of these programs – Principals as Literacy Leaders (PALL) – examined how school leaders could personally impact on closing this gap.

PALL was originally developed and presented by Griffith University, Edith Cowan University and the Australian Catholic University. After the pilot program, many of those who have since undertaken it have done so with the support of their state’s Department of Education, or professional association, or from their own funds.

The program set out to accomplish two things: to improve the literacy outcomes of students, and provide principals with the opportunity to become leaders in this area. In short, the core principle of the program argues that the responsibility for leading learning must be taken by the principal.

Today, more than 1,200 school leaders have undertaken the professional learning involved. One of them is the principal of North Sydney’s Monte Sant’ Angelo Mercy College, Nicole Christensen.

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Christensen, who rolled out the program at her school in 2010, tells The Educator that, ever since, there has been “a palpable shift in mindset and an excitement” among teaching staff.

“This shift has resulted in a genuine engagement with and implementation of literacy strategies in the classroom. Teachers are now more self-aware and self-reflective as regards their own pedagogy and using our

staff who could capture the buy-in of all staff, more opportunities for staff learning, and the time to immerse ourselves in the research and have healthy, robust debate,” she says.

“In this way, the changes in impetus and momentum have been evident in the college’s explicit engagement with the notion of ‘Shaping Minds, Shifting Mindsets’, which was the focus of our staff conference.”

“There is a palpable shift in mindset and an excitement amongst teaching staff that has resulted in a genuine engagement with and implementation of literacy strategies in the classroom” Nicole Christensen, Monte Sant’ Angelo Mercy College College’s own data to define our next steps,” she says.

Christensen adds that, as the PALL program developed, the college increased the membership of the team involved in the program, and that all members have a leadership role within the college.

“We felt that, in our context, to truly affect whole-school change we needed members of

Christensen points out that this has set the tone for the new academic year, profiling the way in which the college is approaching literacy differently.

“We have also changed the way in which we report and are including a way of working specific to literacy, which has become a strategic priority for all the faculties this year,” she adds.

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THE SCHOOL AT A GLANCE

Founded in 1875, Monte Sant’ Angelo Mercy College is the oldest independent girls’ school on Sydney’s North Shore

Not a ‘generic leadership program’ Professor Tony Townsend, from the Griffith Institute for Educational Research, tells The Educator that since the program’s initial stage there have been a number of other specific development projects across four states in Australia.

“There was one that was offered in South Australia, a couple in Western Australia, one we’re doing this year in Queensland, three in Tasmania, and this is the fourth year of projects that are being funded by the Victorian Government,” he says.

“Overall, nearly 1,200 groups of people have gone through this program, and it’s expanded from just being the principal to being principals and other people in the school.”

Townsend adds that one factor that makes PALL so comprehensive is that it is delivered in five modules with 10 hours of coaching provided throughout the year, as well as ongoing support and follow-up activities after workshops.

He explains that the follow-up activities are undertaken by the principals with their communities, supported by designated coaches.

“It’s not a generic leadership program.

It’s a leadership program for a very specific purpose – and that purpose is to improve reading,” he says.

“What we could say is that if you took out the reading content and put in mathematics content, you could run the same program for

The college caters for approximately 1,080 students from Years 7 to 12

The school was named after Monte Sant’ Angelo, located in Gargano, Italy

Monte was the first Catholic girls’ school in NSW to offer both the International Baccalaureate Middle Years and Diploma programs

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FEATURE / BROKER EDUCATION SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT

MONTE SANT’ ANGELO MERCY COLLEGE

PRINCIPALS AS LITERACY LEADERS In 2010, the college implemented a one-year program called Principals As Literacy Leaders (PALL), which argues that the responsibility for leading learning must be taken by the principal.

PALL was funded by the Federal Government under a project aimed at closing the gap in terms of student performance.

The PALL program is designed to provide principals and other literacy leaders with knowledge and skill development related to taking a leading role in improving students’ reading abilities.

The program has five modules, two in term one (on two consecutive days) and one in each of the other three school terms.

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that subject. So we’re looking at leadership for a specific purpose.”

Townsend notes that a core focus of PALL is assisting students at the end of primary school who are lagging behind in literacy, or similarly, students starting secondary school who are struggling.

“So we’re looking at that middle school program, which is what we’re focusing on here. Essentially, we found in the schools [where the program works] the teachers are all very passionate and committed to working together,” Townsend says.

“They have a commitment to make sure that every child learns, and they are also starting to develop an evidence base so they can argue not just why they’re doing something a certain way but what the research is behind that which shows that it is the right way to go.”

He says there are initiatives in schools that

are now able to sustain the objectives of PALL, even if the principal moves schools or retires.

“This is because the rest of the school has taken it on and embedded it into the curriculum.”

PALL’s next phase Townsend says that, given the program’s success, it would be nice to get the word out to other principals who are having difficulty driving improved literacy outcomes in their schools.

“If we’re appointing new staff, it would be nice to have other teachers know about this.

We now need to think about how to get this out to teachers in a much more concerted way than is perhaps being done at the moment,” Townsend says.

“The other step we need to look at is how we get that into teacher training places

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so that students coming out of university have an understanding of the structures of reading, the elements of reading, and so on.”

Townsend says this means that schools that have accepted PALL don’t then need to spend two or three months training new people to bring them up to speed.

Another powerful component of this program is its ability to allow school leaders to develop an Intervention Plan that considers a particular aspect of reading improvement for a particular group of students. One example of this might be improving oral language for junior school students.

The Intervention Plan will then be implemented in the subsequent year, using five modules: two in term one (on two consecutive days) and one in each of the other three school terms.

After each of the module sessions the school leader will be expected to take what was learned back to their school, work with staff and the school community, and then bring what they have learned from this process back to share with others in the following module.

The content of the PALL program’s five modules is: • Leading Learning: What’s in the Research?

• What Leaders Need to Know about Learning to Read • Leading Literacy Data Gathering and Analysis • Designing, Implementing and Monitoring Literacy Interventions • Intervention Evaluation and Future Planning

different colours and tell them which ones most reflected conflict. One student put their hand up and asked what conflict meant. In this sense, we would argue that all secondary teachers need to be teachers of

“The underpinning in PALL has been that it’s driven by the principal, and without that driver we don’t get involved. It’s not a professional development program for middle leaders or junior leaders – it’s for the person right at the top” Tony Townsend, Griffith University literacy [in their own subject area] in order to maximise their students’ chances of success,” he says.

“It is important for teachers of secondary students to not only judge whether or not their students have a good understanding of the subject area they teach – whether it be STEM, social science or a different language – but also to judge whether they can read and understand the terms used in that subject well when undertaking a particular subject.”

Bringing literacy to STEM education With STEM education recognised as being crucial to students’ future job opportunities, Townsend points to the important role literacy plays in this learning area.

“We’re trying to bring literacy to STEM. What we’re discussing in this particular program are the literacy components,” he explains, before citing an example.

“A teacher asked students to look at

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FEATURES

TIMETABLING

MAXIMISING ENGAGEMENT, MINIMISING INEFFICIENCY Mastering the art of timetabling takes time and experience, and when the task isn’t left in capable hands, the costs to a school can be substantial

LAST YEAR, as part of The Educator’s inaugural education report, senior educators from around Australia were asked to name the core issues their schools were facing and the ways in which they planned to overcome those obstacles.

The survey, encompassing participants from every state and territory and across the Catholic, government and independent sectors, asked principals what their schools would be doing over the next 12 months, in order to achieve their business objectives.

Our results revealed that 52% of those who took part planned to review the structure of their schools’ operations with a view to improving efficiency. Additionally, principals participating ranked “managing school operating costs” as third in a list of the nine greatest challenges of the coming year.

One of the challenges associated with minimising operating costs is the ability to effectively timetable for the school year.

“Timetabling is one of the most complex tasks undertaken within schools,” Catherine Elliot-Jones, managing director of Edval Timetables, tells The Educator.

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“The success or failure of a school budget hangs on the outcome of the timetable.”

Where a school operates on an inefficient timetable, the financial impact can be considerable, in addition to its effect on educational opportunities for students. Even the timetable creation process itself can be a significant expense.

Timetabler-in-Residence For the past two decades, home-grown organisation Edval Timetables has been providing software, timetabling solutions and support to schools across the country – in all states and territories – as well as in Ireland, the UK and Asia. Every year, the Edval team works on hundreds of timetables and, according to the company, over 700 schools and hundreds of thousands of students rely on Edval timetables every day.

Recently, Edval has launched its Timetabler-in-Residence (TIR) service, which facilitates total outsourcing of timetabling to Edval’s team. The service encompasses Edval’s consultants working with schools throughout the year on

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building and maintaining the timetable file.

“The Edval TIR will undertake the majority of timetabling tasks normally undertaken by the school timetabler,” Elliot-Jones explains.

“This includes construction of new timetables and timetable maintenance throughout the year. It involves meeting and working closely with the key stakeholders in a school.”

As part of the service, Edval can set up WebChoice forms to allow online subject selection, generate lines based on student choices and staff resource availability, and

“Timetabling is one of the most complex tasks undertaken within schools. The success or failure of a school budget hangs on the outcome of the timetable” Catherine Elliot-Jones, Edval Timetables advise schools as to the number of classes that will be necessary to accommodate student choices. This will mean maximising the number of subjects available to heighten student engagement while, at the same time, minimising the number of classes running.

The need Edval’s TIR service has been created to meet the needs of schools that experience a high turnover in timetablers, those whose timetabler has gone on leave, and those who would simply prefer to leave the art of timetabling to a bona fide expert in the task.

“The time that a new or inexperienced timetabler in a school spends on initially learning both the concepts of timetabling

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and the software is quite substantial and costly,” says Debra, an Edval consultant.

“Often this time is not correctly factored into staff loads, which can result in stress and overwork.”

Other potential impacts, Elliot-Jones says, can include limitations or restrictions on student subject choices, and staff members

“As with any skill, good results come with practice. Within a school, the timetabler only constructs one timetable per year and those skills are not practised again until a year later” Catherine Elliot-Jones, Edval Timetables

EDVAL Edval provides timetabling software, solutions and support to over 700 schools and hundreds of thousands of students. Its products originated from a research project at Sydney University 20 years ago, and Edval now has a team of 25 passionate and committed consultants serving its clients.

Website: www.edval.com.au Email: sales@edval.com.au Phone numbers: • SYD 02 8203 5455 • MEL 03 9020 3455 • ADL 08 8120 0855 • BNE 07 3088 4066 • PER 08 6230 3066

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being placed in classes outside of their specialist areas. This can drive down engagement levels for both students and staff, with falling enrolments a potential long-term outcome.

“Timetabler-in-Residence allows teachers to be available for teaching, while experienced timetable consultants can achieve excellent timetabling outcomes for the school and within good timelines.”

As well as ensuring the timely construction of the timetable, Edval says schools who take up the service can be confident of receiving the best possible solution absent any bias or internal school politics. Edval’s service is about providing fair and equitable timetable construction from an impartial and objective viewpoint.

Expertise It’s often the case that staff members tasked with timetabling lack the knowledge, interest or the time required in order to carry out those crucial responsibilities efficiently.

Elliot-Jones talks about the expertise of Edval’s TIR consultants totally negating the need to train internal staff.

“As with any skill, good results come with practice. Within a school, the timetabler only constructs one timetable per year and those skills are not practised again until a year later,” she says.

“Our consultants are timetabling year

round with many schools. Not only have they built up their own skill set, but they have also built up a knowledge of the many different ways schools adopt to solve similar problems.

This wealth of knowledge across a breadth of schools is invaluable to schools. An in-house timetabler rarely gets to see anything but their own timetable.”

Edval’s TIR service offers the schools that take it up the potential to gain efficiencies that result in direct financial benefits, better staffing and spread of staffing (and ultimately, therefore, greater student engagement and retention). It allows key members of staff, previously charged with the burdensome responsibility of timetabling, to redirect their attention to tasks that cannot be outsourced and are integral to the functioning of a school, such as curriculum initiatives.

The feedback So, how has the response been from those who have already taken up Edval’s TIR service? Elliot-Jones reports highly positive client feedback.

“All our TIR schools are very happy with the service,” she tells The Educator.

“They wish they had done it earlier and, having experienced it, they feel that continuing is a no-brainer.”

Debra, an Edval consultant, also comments on feedback the organisation has received about the TIR service.

“In addition to the financial benefits, morale was greatly improved among teachers, with the benefits of this flowing on to students. Timetables were distributed to teachers and senior students midway term 4, allowing for forward planning.”

One particular school leader offered the feedback: “This is the calmest and smoothest start to the year we have ever had.” Another commented: “To have someone purely focused on the best possible timetable for a school is a real advantage.”

So, in looking to address the costs associated with running a school, it may be valuable for senior educators to give serious thought to the role that can be played by external service providers.

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SPONSORED FEATURE

PRINCIPAL CERTIFICATION

Principals Australia Institute develops Australian Principal Certification PRINCIPALS AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE (PAI) has developed the Australian Principal Certification Program based on the Australian Professional Standard for Principals. The model for assessment has been created by the profession and for the profession and will be launched in the coming months for practising principals and aspiring princpals.

The Australian Professional Standard for Principals sets out what principals are expected to know, understand and do, to achieve in their work. Principals are doing a great job of carrying out a complex role in an industry critical to the future of the nation.

Quality education is essential to future national growth: the OECD recently noted that “The quality of schooling in a country is a powerful predictor of the wealth that countries will produce in the long run” (OECD, 2015).[1] PAI’s recent independent market research affirms principals’ support for certification, with 70% of principals supporting the model.

“This is a great step in recognising the work of principals,” said Paul Geyer, CEO of PAI. “At present the profession does not have any way of recognising this work like other professions – eg doctors, lawyers, accountants. etc. We believe that certification will provide peer and public recognition of the outstanding work undertaken by principals. Assigning a postnominal such as Certified Practising Principal

or Fellow will drive recognition of school leaders in the wider community and a continued focus on professional development. Post-nominals were unanimously recommended by principals in the certification trial.”

Quality schools depend on recognising the strategic importance of principal leadership.

Our ability to recognise and value quality professional work depends on our ability to assess it, which is where Australian Principal Certification comes in.

PAI’s Certification Program is not a course or a qualification but a portfolio of evidence that demonstrates your leadership in action in your school. The Australian Principal Certification affirms the importance of quality

educational leadership and strengthens the unique role of principals in improving the quality of learning and teaching in schools.

It is recognition of the Australian Principal standard in action.

Certification represents the intersection of professional, personal and moral purpose. It recognises a principal’s individual status within the profession, as well as raising the status of the profession collectively. It provides a significant reference point for principals and school leaders in their professional learning and ongoing development.

For more information about certification, visit pai.edu.au or email contact@pai.edu.au.

[1] OECD, 2015. Universal Basic Skills: What Countries Stand to Gain. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/edu/universal-basic-skills-9789264234833-en.htm

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PEOPLE

CAUGHT ON CAMERA Scooter Tutor currently has over 200 tutors in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney

SCOOTER TUTOR LAUNCHES

Scooter Tutor co-founders Cameron Schmidt and Sam Robertson

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With over 200 tutors currently available on its platform, Scooter Tutor is seeking to modernise the process of hiring a tutor through the use of an online booking system that, it says, integrates quality and efficiency. With Scooter Tutor, the process of finding the right tutor based on a student’s subject, year levels, location and availability all occurs online.

Sam Robertson, co-CEO of Scooter Tutor, said the platform revolutionises tutoring by bridging the gap between traditional tutoring centres and referrals from friends.

“There is a massive gap between quality and efficiency in the tutoring space right now, as the tutoring centre model is very old-school and admin-heavy, and although it has the quality control it lacks the efficiency,” Roberston said, “whereas the referrals and cash-in-hand tutors have the efficiency but no quality control as tutors haven’t been screened.

“There was nothing in the middle that was connecting the dots to modernise the way tutoring works.”

Scooter Tutor is currently operating in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. The company ensures that every tutor is certified to work with children and backgroundchecked thoroughly, and each is employed as a Scooter Tutor employee.

“We’re hoping to expand to 1,000 tutors by the second half of 2017,” Robertson said.

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Teacher and student at the junior school communicate using only hand gestures

OIC volunteers help preparatory school students to reflect on their experience in staying silent

SCHOOL TAKES PART IN DAY WITHOUT SPEECH Recently, 800 students aged between five and 12 from Sydney’s Trinity Grammar School remained silent for up to an entire day. The school took part in Day Without Speech, a program raising funds for speech therapy in Cambodia.

The Day Without Speech program is run by OIC Cambodia and funds raised support the organisation’s work to establish speech therapy as a profession in Cambodia and to make it available to all of those across the country who need it.

“More than 600,000 or one in 25 people in Cambodia, many of them children, have a speaking or swallowing disability, which impacts them physically, mentally and socially,” said Weh Yeoh, a physiotherapist and Sydney native who founded OIC Cambodia.

“They don’t get the help they need because there are no Cambodian speech therapists, no government policies addressing the issue, and limited knowledge about speech therapy practices … In Cambodia, children with a disability are often excluded from school, which has a huge impact on their future prospects.”

This is the second year that Trinity students have participated in the Day Without Speech challenge, and so far they’ve raised around $18,000 in total.

Scooter Tutor currently has over 200 tutors in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney

Boys at the junior school check in on each other using whiteboards and computers to communicate

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PEOPLE

CAREER PATH

THE GREAT INNOVATOR When it comes to driving innovative change, Merrylands East Public School principal John Goh has walked the talk Goh became the principal of Merrylands East Public School in suburban Sydney.

“As principal, I have transformed Merrylands East into a 21st century public school that supports students learning anywhere, anytime, and with anyone in open mobile and agile spaces”.

2005 BEGINS AN ILLUSTRIOUS TENURE

2006-07

MAKES AN IMPACT

2011

OVERSEES ‘BUILDING THE EDUCATION REVOLUTION’ PROJECTS Merrylands East built a hall, COLA, a fully furnished commercial canteen, a toilet block and a $250,000 electrical substation, and undertook an electrical upgrade as well as a refurbishment of the whole school and 20% of the playground. Goh self-managed three ‘Building the Education Revolution’ projects, including the building of a security fence around the school.

2012

RECOGNISED AS INSPIRATIONAL Goh was nominated in the inspiration category for the 2012 Pride of Australia Medal

“I also received a Harvard Club Teachers Mutual Bank Public Education foundation scholarship to study at Harvard Graduate School of Education, along with an ACE Leadership Award for the use of social media in education”

Goh self-managed the $120,000 ‘Investing in our Schools’ initiative.

“During this time Merrylands East built a Covered Outdoor Learning Area (COLA) and installed the first major photovoltaic system (36 solar panels) at the school.”

2011

PREPARES STUDENTS FOR 21ST CENTURY ECONOMY Merrylands East was converted into a facility with open learning spaces and all teachers team teaching and using student-centred pedagogies, with a high use of ICT for learning.

“Students have designed iMovies, blogs, websites, powtoons, 3D animations, phone apps, and used software to create print 3D objects as part of their integrated curriculum” 2013

OVERHAULS SCHOOL HOURS Goh led his school’s introduction of flexible school hours – 8am to 1:15pm (a first for any primary school in Australia).

“Many parents, or extended family, are at home, and for those students who cannot go home at 1.15pm, there is a homework centre until 3pm and an after-school care centre.”

2014

AWARDED SCHOLARSHIP Goh was awarded a NSW Public Education Foundation/ Harvard Club/Teachers Mutual Bank scholarship to study a leadership course at Harvard University.

2017

SHARES HIS WISDOM WITH THE MASSES Goh presented a TedX Sydney Salon Talk about technology and education.

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PEOPLE

OTHER LIFE

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Number of schools that have participated to date in Film by the Sea

1,000+

Number of films made to date

$20,000

Given away in scholarships from Film by the Sea sponsors

‘MR FILM BY THE SEA’ How do you stay motivated and ready for all challenges after 20 years as a principal? You take on a project bigger than Ben Hur, Miranda Public School principal Glen Carter tells The Educator MIRANDA PUBLIC School principal Glen Carter lives by the mantra: “Always bite off more than you can chew, and then chew like crazy!”

Known as ‘Mr Film by the Sea’, Carter has built a couple of short films into four annual statewide film festivals and a sister festival in Canada under the banner ‘Film by the Sea’.

Now in its sixth year, Film by the Sea is a platform for NSW public school students to tell their stories through film-making.

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“There is no greater example of 21st century learning than teaching visual literacy through film-making,” Carter says.

“Film by the Sea also offers accredited courses and professional development for staff across NSW. “Film by the Sea regularly works with community organisations, such as White Ribbon and Miranda RSL Sub Branch, to help tell their stories and get their messages out,” Carter adds. He believes that film-

making has encouraged a passion for writing in his students, and says it’s not uncommon for students to enter his office with new script ideas each day.

Carter often turns to his notepad and pen on his bedside table at 3am when a crazy movie idea pops into his head.

“I’ve been passionate about story writing since I was a little boy, and I love working with children to help bring their stories to life through film-making.”

www.educatoronline.com.au

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