Leading from the Middle

Foreword

Dr Dean Dudley, CF Director of The King’s School Institute

There is a well-worn and potentially dangerous cliché that states ‘it’s not what you know, but who you know’. This cliché insufficiently articulates the power that is harnessed in the concept of social capital. That is because what we know depends in great part on who we know and how we engage and interact with them based on the ‘what’.

The importance of social capital in developing middle leaders in schools and building their capability by interacting with one another, both within and across their designated areas of responsibility in schools, cannot be understated. It is in the development of relational trust and in cultivating social interactions that build leadership competence and capability.

Of particular note, the role of social relationships in developing pedagogical leadership that enables change. In short, developing leadership capability in schools necessitates moving beyond an exclusive focus on the competencies and capabilities of individual leaders to engage more broadly with the social side of leadership capability.

Based on this research and for the fifth consecutive year, The King’s School Institute has invested in identifying and supporting a select number of staff in completing the Leading from the Middle program run by the Association of Independent Schools (AIS) of NSW Leadership Centre. In 2022, The King’s School Institute committed 14 teachers from each of its three campuses to completing the program. This program seeks to place great teachers “in a powerful position to exercise significant leadership within their Department, if not across the School as a whole”. For the first time, these exceptional middle leaders were also championed by a member of the School’s Extended Executive. This measure was added to this year’s Leading from the Middle program to increase the traction of the candidate’s projects.

“developing pedagogical leadership that enables change”

Developing Contemporary Music Learning In The Performing Arts

The Current Situation

Gregory Burgett

The King’s School Music Department is blessed to have academic and musically gifted students engage in our programs and in our curriculum. The students who enter our programs, in both the curricular and co-curricular spaces, come from a musical background that is formed by the structures, syllabuses and pre-requisites of the external music examination systems such as the Australian Music Examinations Board or Trinity College London. The musical formation of these students is built on music theory and the performance of syllabus-based exam repertoire in a solo setting drawn largely from the European Classical Music tradition. As relevant as this type of formation can be, it has greatly narrowed the offerings within our Departments’ programs to the detriment of diversity, meaning we can no longer say we run an academic or co-curricular program in our faculty that reflects the comprehensive, non-selective education for boys’ ethos of The King’s School.

The Opportunity

Our Department has begun to employ strategies that aim to target musically gifted students in Year 7 by streaming two classes of music students into the Music Enrichment Stream. Here, eligible Year 6 boys are asked to apply and audition for the opportunity to gain entrance into this Year 7 Music class, which aims to engage the musically experienced so that they may be extended in their performance, composition and musicology experiences in a skills-based setting. By doing this, our Department has created an opportunity to further differentiate our curriculum offerings to capture and engage musically talented students from less-structured music backgrounds. These students may not experience music using what would be described as traditional methods but have a good set of musical skills

that can be developed. This creates an opportunity for the Department to create learning opportunities that explore the ways that these musicians creatively access music performance, composition and musicology. One such way is through Audio Engineering.

The Plan

The creation of an Audio Engineering Program will ensure student musicians are offered an opportunity to explore how music is made and produced that doesn’t involve traditional pathways of music education. Taught in a studio environment with their instruments ‘in hand’, the program is tailored to music students from non-traditional backgrounds: it encourages service to community; fosters engagement and participation in both the curricular and co-curricular music programs; focuses on the development of musical excellence in performance, composition, and musicology domains; and provides a future vocational pathway.

The Benefits to All

1. Meeting the current needs for differentiation in Music. 2. Students achieving as real musicians. 3. Growth in subject selection numbers 4. Builds upon the two-stream music elective program by providing a more meaningful Stage 4-5 pathway for students considering Music 1 and VET Entertainment.

5. Future School enrolments, to access the diverse Music Program. 6. Exceptional results in HSC Courses. 7. Students moving into tertiary music studies and professional music careers.

8. Opportunity for a Music Futures Open Academy arm to the Music Department.

Excellence Through Basketball: Providing Staff And Students The Capacity To Be The Best They Can Be

Sport is a compulsory activity for all students at The King’s School and, as such, the staff have a responsibility to provide the best coaching to them regardless of their age, ability, or background. Excellence in basketball is not necessarily about being in the top team or being the most skilled player, it is about becoming the best player that an individual can be. The only way this can happen is by staff providing students with purposeful, well-conceived and effective training sessions throughout the season.

To achieve this goal, The King’s School Basketball program runs staff inductions prior to each season, provides coaching professional development sessions and provides a Basketball Professional development page with resources via the School’s Canvas Learning Management System. If staff feel supported and valued in their endeavour to upskill themselves, there will be more buy-in and this will create another dimension to building excellence through basketball.

Josh Chapman

As you can imagine, not all staff are well versed in basketball or have the depth of knowledge of the sport to afford this coaching. My goal is to create a program that can improve all students’ abilities through the upskilling and development of staff. If staff can develop the competencies needed to be a proficient coach, this can then translate to the student’s athletic and sporting development and we, as a program, will be well on the way to have excellence in basketball.

Leading Pedagogical Change: K-2 Literacy Project

The K-2 English and Mathematics syllabuses represent the beginning of a momentous stage of curriculum transformation for primary schools. Teachers need to feel empowered, not overwhelmed with change. This challenge requires a thoughtful and strategic approach.

Sara Clarke

My project focuses on leading pedagogical and curricular change within The King’s School, Preparatory School. The particular focus was on staff training, curriculum development and implementation of two new syllabuses (English K-2 and Mathematics K-2). In order to ensure the effective delivery of this project, it was necessary to ensure that sustainable change occurs in the pedagogical knowledge of the teachers, the written curriculum and the Preparatory School’s reporting practices. Time was dedicated to ensuring that all K-2 teachers developed a clear understanding of the evidence base of the new syllabuses, and the outcomes and content contained within. Through this leadership project and the implementation of the new syllabuses, students should demonstrate stronger literacy skills and greater conceptual mathematical understandings across K-2.

This plan was designed to gain bestpractice pedagogy in the teaching and learning of English and Mathematics across all K-2 classes. The need to build teacher understanding of the content and structure of both the new English and Mathematics syllabuses was necessary. To achieve this, I considered my role in leading Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 to lead staff to become confident and knowledgeable practitioners of the new syllabus documents which will impact student outcomes.

The first syllabus to be unpacked and implemented was Mathematics. Time allocated for collaborative meetings with each grade allowed for psychological safety to be acknowledged as a driver of strong team performance. Within these meetings, the aim and group expectations were transparent; every member contributed, with each voice heard and input appreciated. There were instances where members showed fallibility. The ‘What is missing?’ moments demonstrated that we were all in an environment where it was safe to admit to misunderstandings and seek answers to questions. These meetings allowed for staff to build upon their prior knowledge and teaching pedagogy to approach the new syllabus with confidence and faith in their own ability in its implementation.

The implementation of the English syllabus has proved to be a long process due to the shift in teaching focuses. To obtain a greater, collaborative approach to this syllabus, planning time was provided by a member of the Kindergarten team to ensure that a cross-stage understanding of the content was sequenced seamlessly.

Following these planning days, dedicated professional development time with Stage 2 and 3 teachers will be provided to assist them with the professional knowledge to implement the new structure within the new English syllabus. I have incorporated the Designing for change model where the mindsets, skillsets and toolsets of the participants are the processes for change.

Community Engagement Initiative

On 24 April 2022, The King’s School Memorial Chapel celebrated the 50th anniversary of its relocation, stone by stone, to the present site by Gowan Brae. Old Boys from previous generations gathered for a special service to reflect on the significance of this building in the life of The King’s School Community and to celebrate the ministry that has taken place there over the past 133 years. Historically, the Memorial Chapel has been a place where Old Boys have been remembered for their service and sacrifice in military campaigns. It is also the place where many have been baptised, confirmed, married, or remembered at their funerals.

It is a building rich in history and is also a place where the members of our community have been ministered to as they have gathered for these significant occasions.

According to Jesus, the two greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbour. This initiative seeks to determine how we might excel at loving our neighbours, whilst inviting the members of our community to partner with us in the work of making an outstanding impact for the good of society. This may take place through the expansion of our Service Learning program, alongside those activities in the life of our School, which focus on character development, the goal being to equip students with an ethic of servanthearted Christ-like love.

Broadly speaking, this initiative seeks to address the question of how The King’s School may continue to engage its community with the timeless message of the Gospel via the ministry of the Memorial Chapel, whilst creating opportunities for staff, students, families and Old Boys to love and serve our neighbours, tapping into our rich history and strong sense of identity.

Rev. Geoffrey Everett

The Prep Praise Portal

David Guild

Character Development is one of the three key distinctives of a King’s School education. At King’s, this character development is based on instilling eight core values in each of our students. While we can explicitly explain what each of the School Values are, it can be challenging to assess how well our students are able to demonstrate these values in their daily lives. The gathering of data about positive student behaviour would be a useful tool for assessing the character development of King’s students.

At The King’s School, Preparatory School, we do a good job of collecting data on student behaviour. However, nearly all the data collected pertains to the recording and reporting of negative behaviours exhibited by our students. There is very little data collected about

the positive behaviours that students are exhibiting. Students are rewarded by teachers with Excellence Awards when they behave in a positive manner but the names of the recipients and what they are being rewarded for were not stored in a centralised database. Thus, reporting about a student’s character development was challenging, as there was a reliance on anecdotal records and teacher opinion when making character-based judgments.

The creation of an online reporting tool housed on the KingsNet platform, known as The Prep Praise Portal, has helped to create a database of positive student behaviour at school. The portal allows both staff and students to log the positive student behavioural choices they see at school. The portal gives students agency over the process, as they are actively encouraged by staff to nominate students they observe behaving positively at school.

The data gathered from The Prep Praise Portal is regularly disseminated through automated reports to various stakeholders including the Prep Executive, Housemasters and teachers and provides valuable insights into students’ wellbeing and character development. The information recorded on the portal is also used to help reward those students who are demonstrating positive behaviours in the form of House Distinction awards. These rewards help students to feel acknowledged for their good behaviour and, hopefully, inspire other students to act as Kingsmen.

We already had an online behaviour database at the Prep School that provided staff with readily available means to report incidents of negative behaviour as they occurred. Using this database as a starting point, and with the assistance of the School’s ICT Department, I was able to design a straightforward online form that sat as a quick link for staff and

students on the KingsNet landing page. The use of KingsNet also meant that scheduled automated reports can be sent to the various stakeholders in the form of an Excel spreadsheet so they can see which students had been nominated recently on the platform.

After sharing the portal with various stakeholders and refining the language used on the page, the portal was rolled out on a trial basis with staff and our Stage 3 students. The uptake and engagement from staff has been pleasing and their feedback on the portal has been overwhelmingly positive. Most pleasingly, the students themselves are eager to nominate and reward their peers for the positive behaviour they are demonstrating. There were some initial teething problems with students nominating themselves, but these were easily ironed out by using KingsNet to track who was making the nominations. We are now in the process of rolling out the portal to our Stage 2 students.

In order to assess how our students’ characters are developing, it is necessary to continuously gather and analyse data on both the positive and negative behaviours our students are exhibiting. The Prep Praise Portal has enabled the Prep School to gather a vast amount of relevant and meaningful data on which of our students are consistently demonstrating the School Values in their interactions with others. With a successful trial of the portal underway at Prep, there is an opportunity to roll out similar platforms across the School’s other campuses.

Developing Intentional Environments For Christian Leadership Formation

The formation of young men with the capacity to lead with ‘wisdom, compassion and justice’ takes place within the organisational pillars of Academic Excellence, Character Development and Christian Community. Leadership development is an implicit aspect of these and is deeply embedded within much of what students participate in at King’s. Recently, much work has been done in explicitly articulating the structures and opportunities that exist for leadership formation within co-curricular programs. There is little doubt that opportunities for leadership formation are abundant and rich and indeed are developing young men with many of the skills and initiative required of a leader today.

What environment fosters the intent in young leaders to choose pathways that ensure they use their skills and abilities for the good of others in their field of vocation?

What skills do young leaders need in order to act on their convictions, vision and desire to make a difference for the good of others?

Steven Hodgson

For nearly 200 years The King’s School has existed to create leaders. Bishop Broughton’s original vision states ‘The education in The King’s School is not for the exclusive benefit of those upon whom it is bestowed, but for that of the entire community.’ The current King’s purpose further develops this idea ‘… The achievement of academic excellence in a caring environment that is founded on Christian belief and behaviour, so that students are equipped to act with wisdom, compassion and justice as faithful stewards of our world.’ The King’s School seeks to develop leaders for the good of others, leaders who look beyond themselves and invest their capacity for the betterment of society and our world. It is a grand ideal.

However, given that King’s exists not for the ‘benefit’ of those who are fortunate enough to receive an education within its school, but for the benefit of the ‘entire community’ our evaluation of leadership formation should be measured, not solely by the skills and initiative of young men to lead, but by the character of their leadership and their internalised vision of contributing to the common good. Arguably, King’s vision is not one that is developed in the marketplace of consumerism and capitalism, but from the worldview of the Christian Community. The vision of leadership in a Christian community is one that is leadership ‘for others’ as exemplified through the sacrificial life of Jesus Christ. The question to be asked, therefore, are graduates of King’s embodying this ideal or are they reflecting something different? Is our environment conducive to this end?

In exploring this question of Christian Leadership formation, a few challenges emerged that became the catalyst for the project moving forward:

How do we help develop a vision (worldview) for a ‘better world’ in those graduating from King’s?

This initiative seeks to intentionally shape environments that foster the unique vision and character of leadership that a Christian Community holds. The intent moving forward is to work alongside already established programs so that the King’s unique vision of leadership might be fostered more effectively. Three areas of focus will be developed:

1. A clearly articulated vision of the product of leadership formation at King’s that is communicated consistently across our environments.

2. Development of an effective tool for measurement of key characteristics of Christian Leadership that allows for both positive feedback and personal evaluation as students grow.

3. Working alongside key stakeholders, we will identify opportunities to deepen students’ exposure to needs within the community and the broader world that challenges their worldview, fosters a desire for a better future, and provides opportunities to lead as agents for change in significant projects.

Owning Your Zone

Alison Lawson

The King’s School is a Christian community that seeks to make an outstanding impact for the good of society through its students, and by the quality of its teaching and leadership in education. Teaching and Learning form the engine room of the School, for without them the School ceases to exist. Academic excellence is essential for the School’s ongoing success, but is not, in itself, sufficient to guarantee that success.

Social and emotional learning is the process through which students acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, set and achieve positive goals, and make responsible decisions.

As a Kindergarten teacher and Red Colour Housemaster at The King’s School, Tudor House, I observe students from PreKindergarten to Year 6 struggling with self-regulation and emotional control. There are many factors contributing to change and uncertainty. For example, extended periods of missed schooling, climate change, the rise of extremism and pervasive use of technology, just to name a few. Sadly, interference with everyday life and learning for students, families, teachers and peers are common realities.

The King’s School, Tudor House is an International Baccalaureate School following the PYP programme. The PYP program, together with the successful implementation of the Zones of Regulation (ZOR) program will be the vehicle for teachers and parents to support students in demonstrating agency as active and engaged learners.

Explicit teaching of the ZOR program will engage the entire Tudor House community in a common language and compassionate framework to firstly improve self-regulation and emotional control and wellbeing. Extending further beyond is a second and powerful goal of improving academic excellence and selfefficacy.

In addition, through the School’s Values, students will be equipped to demonstrate Compassion, Humility, Respect, Honesty, Integrity, Responsibility, Excellence and Gratitude through:

• identifying their own feelings and levels of alertness.

• choosing effective regulation tools.

• problem solving positive solutions.

• understanding how their behaviours influence others’ thoughts and feelings.

This initiative benefits the entire Tudor House community. Emotions play a key role in school environments and have a significant impact on academic excellence and performance. As such, the correct regulation and handling of emotions is essential for the personal and academic wellbeing of students.

An Evidence-Based View To Thrive At King’s

The world in which our students learn is rapidly changing. Now, more than ever, nurturing our students’ wellbeing is paramount to ensure each individual achieves their full potential, wherever their passions lie. To achieve individual success, The King’s School offers every student a unique pathway in learning, developing their cognitive, emotional, social, physical, and spiritual qualities ready to emerge as Global Thought Leaders.

The wellbeing emphasis at King’s ensures that students have positive health, engagement, achievement, a sense of purpose, and a superior ability to manage stress. Wellbeing is a powerful force linked to students’ activities and programs within the School’s distinctives of Academic Excellence, Character Development and Christian Community.

Sandi Netto

A wellbeing dashboard will capture individual performance across all programs and activities. Consistent data collection, analysis, and review will provide specific insight into learning, engagement, and achievements across the School. The data display will reward personal success through the implementation of individual learning and behavioural support interventions.

The dashboard will empower systems to further support individuals, cohorts, and approaches within the School. Traceable data sets will clarify multiple trends which further identify and support wholeschool initiatives, positively contributing to students’ wellbeing. Individual skill deficits will be highlighted, informing the design and implementation of strategies and adjustments to meet individual learning needs. Students who are thriving will also be highlighted with evidencebased reasons for this success. This will provide a base to further improve School programs and apply strategies to other students.

In the future, the King’s Wellbeing Dashboard will be available to the student and stakeholders, to actively engage with goal setting and track personal growth.

• Initially the dashboard will be teacher driven and managed.

• Ultimately moving towards a dashboard that is student driven.

• Students will be taught skills and strategies to take ownership and accountability of their own dashboards.

• Students will be empowered to reflect and self-regulate.

• Data will provide social and emotional real-time tracking.

• Clear data visualisations will highlight wellbeing trends.

• Data will provide evidence-based insights across the student cohort.

• Targeted resources will support meaningful interventions.

The result will be Kingsmen who thrive and positively contribute to society.

Academic Support And Tutoring For An Extended School Day - Study Hub

Jason Nowland

King’s offers a wide range of Study Support programs for a diverse range of students. However, much of this is targeted at particular students and “the middle” often miss out. Study Hub will fulfill and support many tutoring and study workshop functions with the Senior School and address the perception that the CLL Tutors are primarily focused on Stage 6 students, and Stage 4 and 5 students “fit in” where they can. Teachers from key subject areas such as English, Mathematics, Science and the HSIE Subjects will be rostered on to Study Hub as part of their co-curricular allowance. Furthermore, the Study Hub will be located in the Centre for Thought Leadership (TL) classrooms to formalise the perception of the program as a mainstream activity within the School. In support of the School’s Strategic Plan, Study Hub will be a key component of the extended school day by providing broadbased academic support of Stage 4 and 5 students outside regular school hours.

Study Hub will operate during two time periods. Monday to Thursday, 3:45 to 5.30pm will be free and will end in time for buses and boarders’ dinner time. Following dinner, a paid period of study will operate until approximately 7.30pm. The after-dinner program will provide closer tutoring of students, and for day boys, will include access to showers after sport and dinner. The initial focus of the program will be on supporting Stage 4 and 5 students to assist in the development of stronger study skills in younger students, in preparation for Stage 6. Opening the initiative to Stage 6 could be feasible after initial start-up, depending on rates of staff “buy-in” and student interest and participation.

McCrindle survey data reveals significant opportunity for the School to provide improved tutoring and study support to day students and their families, while continuing boarder support. 37% of 2022 McCrindle Survey respondents to whether their child receives external academic tutoring answered yes.

In consolidation of the current tutoring and study support provided by the School, the ESS supported Homework Club would remain in place for higher needs students. Furthermore, faculty study clubs such as English – WriteNow will continue in their current form, as these structured group programs provide support before school, during break or lunchtime. Other, more targeted tutoring and study support programs such as the Language Enrichment Program (LEP) for international students, should also remain in place.

Study Hub supports the development of academic excellence in coordination with the extended school day. The program will provide a substantial opportunity to develop the academic ability, performance and support of students at King’s.

Parent Wellbeing Seminars

Jhunlee Pamintuan

Parents are the first and primary educators of their children. A study by Clinton and Hattie (2013) confirmed the idea that students benefit most when there is harmony between the two major learning environments of home and school. Therefore, both parents and teachers should try to work together to grow the qualities they wish the students to acquire. One of the key strengths of the The King’s School community is the parent’s active involvement in areas such as boarding, homecoming weekend, volunteers in the Saturday sports canteens, and fundraising events. The Parent Wellbeing Seminars stand as a means of giving back to the parent community by upskilling them in key areas of their child’s development.

The vision for the Parent Wellbeing Seminars is to create a holistic Stage 4-6 program that mirrors the wellbeing program the boys experience at school. A strategic area that could pilot these seminars is the Boys to Men Program. Through this program, the School would offer a series of seminars to educate parents on wellbeing issues such as mental health, drugs and alcohol, and the appropriate use of technology. This would enable parents to continue the conversation around personal development with their sons beyond the Boys to Men program. If the School could begin to upskill parents, then a consistent message around wellbeing could be achieved.

The Parent Wellbeing Seminars will be piloted as a part of Boys to Men in 2022, with two seminars taking place. The first seminar, ‘Brave Parenting’ by David Kobler will be a 75-minute webinar event that will unpack masculinity, the impact of pornography, sexting and image-based abuse, and sexual decision making.

The second seminar ‘Independent Drug Education Australia’ by Tom Reynolds, teaches parents everything they need to know about drug abuse, with a key focus on providing proactive response skills and strategies that they can use to have informed conversations with their child about alcohol and other drug related situations.

It’s Just Not Cricket

Warwick Percival

While the School is committed to the development of good character and values consistent with a caring Christian community seen through its mission statement, its core business is teaching and learning. As such, the HSC can be seen as the summit of a student’s time at school. This fact is highlighted by multiple ‘league’ tables published in newspapers and other publications that rank students and schools. There is no denying that here at King’s, the marks in the HSC PDHPE Course have not been where they should be for some time. Internal data reveals that over the past 10 years, the faculty is averaging a yearly cohort size of 42 students obtaining 5 Band 6s at a conversation rate of 12%.

It’s just not cricket – recent feedback from student surveys suggests that there is a well verbalised negative stigma surrounding the HSC PDHPE Course and one that is chasing away high performing students from enrolling in it. This is something that does not sit well with the PDHPE Department and is something we are determined to change.

With this in mind, I have utilised the National School Improvement Tool and Continuous Improvement Framework, a data-driven improvement cycle that I am using for improving, optimising and stabilising the Department. Through the information gained from these tools, I am leading a change initiative of the culture and academic rigour of the whole subject, largely aimed at retaining as many of the top academics of each year group into the elective Stage 5 Physical Activity and Sport Studies Course and subsequently, into the Stage 6 PDHPE Course. This is intended to increase the calibre of students in the course and thus, the results obtained by them and the faculty.

Aligned to this program, we have in 2022 started to drip feed many writing strategies and other aspects of our senior classes into the junior years, particularly, the A and B streams of Years 9 and 10 to ensure students are exposed to the content and can gain an experience of how very different the senior courses are to what they are used to or have heard about from other students. For our Stage 6 students, we have developed a more regular assessment schedule of weekly examination-style questions. Specific techniques for answering multiple choice and short to extended response questions have been rolled out to align with what is occurring in their English classrooms. These are then completed with a largely peer-marked process to further develop a deeper understanding of the application of syllabus content against examination-style questions.

Similarly, we have established new relationships with ‘highflying’ faculties within the School and, importantly, external schools who regularly obtain multiple state rankings. These relationships have culminated in a range of workshops with senior teachers, the external marking of our Half-Yearly Examination from staff at Amity College and Our Lady of Mercy College, to name a few. A highlight of these partnerships has been the highly coveted weekly Zoom sessions for our top 30 students that have been taking place since Term 2 with 2021’s 1st in the State for PDHPE.

At the end of the day, we are here for the boys and although we are making serious headway into the betterment of the PDHPE offering for them, we know there is still some way to go. All members of the faculty are onboard to ensure that each student can thrive in the pursuit of achieving their personal best in our classrooms, not just on the sporting field.

Tracking Students

Steven Solomonides

In The King’s School Strategic Plan 2022-2024, there is mention of the Academic Excellence priority to “develop the technological capability to enable academic data to better inform teaching and learning.”

My project aims to help address this goal using external data (NAPLAN) along with internal data across the school to track students. To handle the external data, this year saw the creation of a NAPLAN “dashboard” created in Microsoft Excel that allowed the English and Mathematics Departments to see student results (by Band) for each student, the breakdown of NAPLAN by subdomain, and more importantly, the ability to filter questions by the percentage of students that saw a question and the percentage that got it correct based on a domain. This was

also presented to the respective Heads of Departments to ensure that they understood how to use the file effectively to better inform teaching and learning.

Regarding the internal data, TKS was using the SM Marks platform to record and input student marks for each assessment task. However, with no link or sharing between KLAs, these existed as a “silo”, with no meaningful way to compare students between learning areas. This also highlighted the issue that, while there were formal procedures documented, many mark books were significantly different between KLAs. As such, this meant that there was no clear way to ensure that all mark books were homogenous between each other.

In conversations with the Deputy Head of Academics (Senior School), a new procedure for mark book creation was made then was enacted for the Heads of Departments, and this formed the basis in which links and trends could be made across all faculties, for all students, across the school. This link is in the form of a z-score, which was created for all students for each faculty. A z-score is a numerical measurement that describes a student’s result, to that of the average of a given cohort, measured in standard deviations. This then gives a way to rank students’ academic ability across a particular year group and potentially over their school career.

All this data was then placed onto a Power BI platform so that data visualisations can be made, and trends easily identified. This will also potentially flow onto a year coordinator and house master dashboard where students can be viewed with greater granularity (rather than just their proficiency score) and provide deeper insights into their academic performance across all stakeholders.

The Benefits

1. The NAPLAN “dashboard” allows Heads of Departments to identify and target areas of improvement based on their chosen inputs. This allows targeted interventions with significant time-lead to ensure that highlighted areas of improvement can be worked towards.

2. Students can now be tracked holistically for a decline in their overall performance. Since reductions in academic performance is usually a precursor for pastoral needs, this means earlier interventions for students who may have previously “slipped under the radar” or who have pastoral care needs that have not been identified.

3. Heads of Departments were engaged in the process of the creation of the dashboard, to facilitate exactly the information they want and need. The big idea was to save time for each faculty area to create opportunities for discussions around best practices and intervention strategies.

4. In the future, consultation with Heads of Departments will happen to create bespoke alerts that aim to remove the processing, analysis, and technical components of the information that they need. This aims to remove the burden of time that would have been placed on them within this new space. The rationale was that this would then allow the Heads of Departments to place emphasis on intervention strategies for students identified, rather than finding the students in the first place. This helps inform teaching and learning that would have a potential greater upswing in student growth, which was the primary driver of this initiative.

Manga Mania

Melanie Webster

This initiative aims to expand and develop The King’s School Senior Library’s Manga collection in order to support positive reading habits within the School.

With the spotlight often on falling literacy levels and studies showing that frequent reading for enjoyment can improve vocabulary and fluency, the draft ACARA English curriculum has placed focus on reading for pleasure. By making reading fun, students are more likely to read regularly and with enthusiasm. From this standpoint, it is vital that teacher librarians are on top of current reading trends and provide access to books and stories that will appeal to students based on their taste, age and abilities.

With this being a component of good library practice, the rise in popularity of Manga and Manhwa amongst our students informed the decision-making process. These Asian styles of comic storytelling have been around for years, but recently their popularity has exploded. The shift to digital platforms and userfriendly interfaces, has seen teenagers readily embrace the format. They love reading it, which makes Manga ideal to focus on to encourage reading for enjoyment.

Growing the Manga collection to accommodate this burgeoning interest, does, however, come with some challenges. Firstly, there is a need to identify suitable titles in-line with our current collection development policy. By determining “gaps” in the collection we can aim to better resource our library and increase student engagement by providing them access to the type of stories they want to read. Consultation will be required with professional organisations, affiliated groups, and the students themselves, to determine what purchases and promotions are relevant and engaging. The aim is to provide a vibrant and contemporary selection for all our students.

Secondly, it is imperative to explain and justify the targeted focus on one sublocation of the library collection and clarify why the changes are being made. By collaborating with my peers, other teacher librarians in my PLN and identifying trends, the library is positioned to align with international developments and contemporary trends. It will also improve accessibility for students seeking to find the stories they enjoy.

By expanding our Manga resources, and then advertising and promoting these changes to our students, they will be able to explore a popular writing style. This will encourage them to evolve into regular and happy readers. With constant complaints of falling literacy rates , if we can appeal to the boys and get them engaged in and enjoying their reading, they are better positioned to improve literacy performance across all subject areas.