The Educator issue 2.01

EDUCATORONLINE.COM.AU ISSUE 2.1

Education’s next generation of leaders

TECHNOLOGY REPORT The latest education technology in focus

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PEAK PERFORMANCE Is the ‘Pygmalion Effect’ holding you back?

THE BIG INTERVIEW Roger Herbert, Timbertop – Geelong Grammar School

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EDITORIAL www.educatoronline.com.au MARCH/APRIL 2015 EDITORIAL

SALES & MARKETING

Editor Iain Hopkins

Marketing & Communications Manager Lisa Narroway

Journalists Brett Henebery Ben Abbott Production Editors Roslyn Meredith Hayley Barnett

Business Development Manager Gareth Scott

CORPORATE

ART & PRODUCTION

Chief Executive Officer Mike Shipley

Design Manager Daniel Williams

Chief Operating Officer George Walmsley

Designer Loiza Caguiat Traffic Coordinator Lou Gonzales

Managing Director Justin Kennedy Chief Information Officer Colin Chan Human Resources Manager Julia Bookallil

EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES

WHO WANTS TO BE A LEADER? “IT’S LONELY at the top.” That’s a quote often attributed to CEOs, heads of government and anyone else who has risen to the top of their field.

It’s no different in the education sector. However, it’s not just lonely at the top – it can be inordinately challenging, stressful and, in some cases, violent.

The Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey report, released in December 2015, found an alarming spike in cases of burnout, stress and violence experienced by principals.

Is it any wonder upcoming leaders are thinking twice about stepping into such roles? Anecdotal evidence of this reluctance is backed up by statistics indicating that application rates from assistant principals and other aspirants to the top role have declined by between 60% and 85% in recent years.

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The future is in their hands – let’s give them the support they need to meet these challenges head-on The consensus seems to be that principals simply have too much on their plate: too many administrative obligations and not enough time to get on with the role of educating young people.

Ron Bamford, president of the Australian Principals Federation WA branch, told The Educator Online that one “quick solution” to rising administrative workloads would be to create a CEO-like role to free up principals’ time. This role could have, under the direction of the principal, power to sign off on all things non-educational, Bamford suggested.

For example, the CEO could be the worksite manager under occupational, health and safety laws, as well as the person responsible for final sign-off on budgets and accounts. This person could also be responsible for risk management, Bamford said.

While such a solution might have some appeal, clearly a one-sizefits-all approach will not work. Education is one of the most rewarding professions, and there is optimism despite the doom and gloom – and this is most clearly seen in those professionals featured on The Educator’s ‘Rising Stars’ list in this issue. The future is in their hands – let’s give them the support they need to meet these challenges head-on.

Iain Hopkins, editor

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MARCH/APRIL 2015

CONNECT WITH US

CONTENTS 30

Got a story, suggestion, or just want to find out some more information? twitter.com/TheEducatorAU www.facebook.com/TheEducatorAU

UPFRONT 01 Editorial

What will today’s rising stars have to deal with in the education sector of tomorrow – and will they want the top job?

04 The data

FEATURES

16 COVER STORY

TECHNOLOGY SPECIAL REPORT

The Educator’s 2016 guide to the hottest technology

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RISING STARS 2016

In The Educator’s inaugural Rising Stars list 2016, we recognise the industry’s best and brightest talent under 40, who together prove that the future of education in Australia is in safe hands

A CAMPUS LIKE NO OTHER What Geelong Grammar’s secluded Timbertop campus lacks in modern technology it makes up for with a rich and unique education in self-reliance and teamwork

06 News analysis

The rise in student data collection threatens to undermine student privacy

10 Head to head

The story behind our declining maths, science and reading performance

FEATURES 44 A virtual reality

Aurora College is making cutting-edge learning real for students in rural and remote NSW, thanks to a pioneering embrace of all things virtual, writes Ben Abbott

48 The sky is the limit FEATURES

PEOPLE

How is Australia faring in closing the gap between Indigenous and nonIndigenous education standards?

TIME FOR ACTION

What can be done to decrease incidents of bullying and depression among principals?

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We all know about unconscious bias, but how about the Pygmalion Effect or the Golem Effect? Corrinne Armour outlines how self-imposed mental limits inhibit optimal workplace performance

50 Principal safety

The Educator investigates what can be done to minimise the risk of violent confrontation with angry students and parents

FEATURES

SCHOOL INNOVATION

The Educator looks at five of the world’s most innovative schools

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FEATURE THE DATA / BROKER EDUCATION

MARCH 2016

CLOSING THE GAP The Educator breaks down the numbers of the 2016 Closing the Gap report to see how, and where, progress is being made on Indigenous equality

CLOSING THE gap between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous education and living standards has been an ongoing objective since the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) unveiled it in 2006. However, over the past 10 years, the initiative has produced a mixed report card, showing that while there is a vast array of programs, there has been little consistency.

83.7%

The overall attendance rate for Indigenous students nationally, compared with 93.1% for non-Indigenous students

In the latest progress report, just two of the seven targets were on track to be met. In terms of education, the only target to be on track was in halving the gap in Year 12 attainment by 2020. This was helped along by a 70% increase in the number of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander students in higher education courses. Halving the gap in reading and numeracy and school

58.5%

The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 20- to 24-year-olds who had achieved a Year 12 or equivalent level of education in 2012-13

NUMERACY AND LITERACY RATES Across the eight areas (reading and numeracy for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9), the proportion of Indigenous students achieving national minimum standards is on track in four areas.

NAPLAN results for Indigenous students vary sharply by area and were better for female students than males.

Although the literacy and numeracy gap remains, the numbers required to halve the gap are within reach.

Improving literacy and numeracy requires a two-fold approach: addressing early childhood education, and accelerating learning for students currently at school.

70%

attendance has respectively stalled and gone off track.

So what does this mean for Indigenous education in 2016 and beyond? In handing down the report, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said his government would redouble its efforts to engage with Indigenous Australians, saying “we cannot sugarcoat the enormity of the job that remains�.

The increase in the number of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander students in higher education courses

47.5%

The Indigenous employment rate in 2012-13, a drop from the 53.8% seen in 2008

CLOSING THE GAP: PROGRESS AGAINST TARGETS How is Australia faring against its targets?

NOT ON Indigenous life expectancy TRACK While Indigenous life expectancy has risen slightly, on average, Indigenous men and women are likely to die 10 years earlier than other Australians. Progress will need to accelerate if the target to close the gap is to be met before 2031.

NOT ON Halve the employment gap by 2018 TRACK No progress has been made on this target since 2008.

NOT ON Halve the gap in school attendance by 2018 TRACK There has been little change in 2015 from the previous year in meeting this target.

ON Halve the gap in Year 12 attainment by 2020 TRACK There has been a 70% increase in the number of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander students in higher education courses.

Halve the gap in reading and numeracy STALLED by 2018 The target is on track to be met for four of the eight areas outlined in the policy.

Ensure 95% of Indigenous four-year-olds

UNCLEAR are in pre-school by 2025

The original target expired in 2013, so this new target was set in its place. Baseline data for this target will be available in March 2016.

ON Halve child mortality by 2018 TRACK Child mortality has fallen by 33% since 1998 and the target is broadly on track to be met by 2018.

Source: Australian Federal Government

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INDIGENOUS STUDENTS REACHING NATIONAL MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR YEAR 5 READING

Northern Territory

Queensland 2008

2008

63%

26%

2015

2015

79%

38%

Western Australia

NSW

2008

2008

52%

78%

2015

2015

63%

81%

ACT 2008

81% 2015

85%

South Australia 2008

Victoria

Tasmania

61%

2008

2008

2015

83%

85%

69%

2015

2015

82%

82%

RETENTION RATES FOR YEAR 7/8 TO YEAR 12*

STUDENT ATTENDANCE RATES YEAR 1 TO 10 COMBINED*

This target is on track. Nationally, the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 20- to 24-year-olds who had achieved a Year 12 or equivalent level of education increased from 45.4% in 2008 to 59.4% in 2013-14.

There has been little change in the Indigenous school attendance rate from 2014 (83.5%) to 2015 (83.7%). In some remote communities, where attendance rates can be low, a new, community-led approach through the Remote School Attendance Strategy has seen improvements, however, progress will need to accelerate from now onwards for this target to be met. non-Indigenous Australians Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples 100%

Other Australians Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

100% 80% 72.7

73.3

76.3

76.9

76

75.6

79.4

47.2

20%

32.1

1998

36.4

84.8 59.4

60% 40%

81.3

38

39.8

47.2

93.3

80%

86.5

92.4

85.9

91.9

83.7

78.6 67.4

60%

51.1

93.1

91.5

40%

40.1

20% 200

2002 2004 2006 2008 2010

2012

2014

*By Indigenous status, 1998-2014

0%

Metropolitan

Provincial

Remote

Very remote

Australia

*By Indigenous status and remoteness, Semester 1, 2015

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FEATURE / BROKER EDUCATION UPFRONT

NEWS ANALYSIS

DATA MINING BOOM The rise in student data collection by schools and technology companies threatens to undermine student privacy due to the vast potential for misuse, writes Ben Abbott

PRINCIPALS HAVE been urged to champion a more mature attitude towards student data privacy in an era of increasing data collection, or risk the potential of student data being misused.

Privacy experts argue the growth of data collection by both schools and third-party service providers means student data is now at more risk of misuse than ever before.

“The more data that is available at people’s fingertips, the more easily it is going to be abused,” says barrister and Australian Privacy Foundation board member, Peter Clarke.

On a school level, Clarke says while an array of sensitive data, such as health records, counseling notes or even sexual preference information, were once kept in separate places in paper form, today’s IT systems allow them to be aggregated and accessed from one central repository.

“This has a positive effect – there’s more administrative efficiency. But the potential for misuse of data and data breaches has the potential for impacts on students,” Clarke says.

Likewise, third-party education technology providers, often located in the US, are data mining students and are not subject to the same strict standards set by Australian privacy law.

“The thing to remember when you use services like Google, and you are not paying for the use of those services, is that you are the product – your information will be data mined.”

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Principal protectors The biggest threat to student data privacy may already be lurking within schools or education departments, as these institutions gain access to mounting quantities of student data.

“Misuse won’t come from some evil genius in the US or China or Russia. It’s more likely it will come from the poorly trained here who aren’t aware of their obligations,” Clarke says.

With more student records collected together within IT systems, and issues of access often poorly managed, there are more opportunities for accidental or malicious data use.

school’s activities, such as educating a student.

Clarke says it’s also important schools and departments understand that the guiding principle of privacy law is that the information should only be used for the purpose for which it was collected.

“There are exceptions – like law and order reasons, for example. The basic test is, ‘Why am I collecting the information?’ If the answer is, ‘I’m curious’, that’s the wrong answer.”

“The more data that is available at people’s fingertips, the more easily it is going to be abused” Peter Clarke, Australian Privacy Foundation “Protection depends on proper data retention policies and privacy training, and that is always a big if, particularly in large organisations like schools and educational departments.

“Because of digitisation, you can pretty much access everything from a central point. The information is not in silos, it is not encrypted; it’s just there for general use and access.”

Under Australian privacy law, schools must only collect personal information if it is reasonably necessary for one or more of a

Clarke says sensitive information should be segmented and only accessed at certain levels of authority. He adds it should be properly protected by password and usernames and two-factor authentication. “The geography teacher shouldn’t be accessing a student’s medical records to find out if a student is diabetic or has a hereditary disease – that information is irrelevant.”

Clarke has also cautioned against the refrain of IT vendors that more student data is always better. “That is the typical IT approach to data – the more data you get the better, because it

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PROTECTING PRIVACY To ensure compliance with legislated Australian Privacy Principals, principals should ensure their schools undertake the following actions (if they have not already done so) Implement a complying privacy policy in line with the Australian Privacy Principles Regularly review and update practices, procedures and systems relating to the way they collect, manage and use personal information to ensure compliance Educate staff on the privacy obligations imposed upon the school and ensure that they are familiar with, and comply with, the school’s privacy policy Source: Hardwood Andrews Lawyers

gives you a fuller picture. But sometimes a person is not entitled to a full picture. Just because a student is on campus does not mean they have no privacy rights at all.”

Just Google it?

US digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a complaint last December with the US Federal Trade Commission alleging that Google was deceptively tracking student data. If true, this would put it in breach of Section 5 of the US Federal Communications Act. Google has courted controversy before. Its popular Google for Education services – used by 30 million students, including Australians – were previously revealed to be mining student data for advertising, resulting in Californian legislation outlawing the selling of K-12 data.

Google has denied the latest claim, saying it now only uses student data to run and improve its services for users, not to analyse individual student behaviour, or to target advertising. However, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) executive officer Jon Lawrence says the education market still needs to be cautious, because Google is still collecting that student data.

“Google does go to a fair bit of effort to protect their users and that’s fine, but at the end

of the day their business model is really about knowing what people want,” Lawrence says.

The Google complaint is just one example of a sector still coming to grips with the boundaries of data collection and handling by companies, while at the same time being a test of some of the suspicions and fears over potential student exploitation.

Clarke says Australians should be comforted local privacy laws are stricter than US law, protecting local students. However, because many education technology providers are US-based, there are potential issues with data being moved offshore, to a weaker US system.

“There is a prohibition in sending data away to be used without consent. But students are usually not in a position to give consent – this is usually done by parents – and usually that’s via a default agreement. There’s some lack of control by students over personal information.”

Growing up A recent paper authored at Curtin University, Born Digital? Presence, Privacy, and Intimate Surveillance, warned that parents who are documenting their children’s lives from the time they are in the womb may cause problems for those children in the future.

“By the time they get to an age where they are in a position to be able to make choices

about their own privacy, it really is too late for them,” says the EFF’s Jon Lawrence.

The same may be said for students being mined for data today. With the explosion of technology, it is hard for any stakeholders in the market to predict what the outcome for these children may be, as both sector understanding and regulation is still evolving.

Lawrence says there is cause of optimism.

He names the eSmart Schools program – designed to help schools improve cybersafety and reduce cyberbullying – as an example of how the sector as a whole is becoming wise to the problems with online technologies.

“At the end of the day there isn’t the level of understanding required within the higher levels of the policy-making space to make good informed policy at the moment,” Lawrence says. “As time passes, the level of understanding and knowledge will inevitably increase, and this will result in more positive outcomes for students, as people make more informed choices.”

Lawrence says the market may also dictate the future. As consumers become more aware of the value of their own data privacy, companies accountable to their shareholders may have to respond or risk losing users to competitors who guarantee to keep their secrets safe.

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FEATURE / BROKER EDUCATION UPFRONT

CAREER PATH

ALL ABOUT TRUST In a rich and varied career, Dr Paul Browning has discovered the number one priority for any leader is to create a culture of trust 2013

2009

EARNS PRAISE FOR HIS THESIS After years of reflection and reading on leadership, Browning turned his hunch into a thesis for a PhD through the Queensland University of Technology. His thesis was awarded an executive dean’s commendation.

After 18 years’ experience in a leadership position I now realise that the most important role of a leader is to build a culture of trust. To quote Sergiovanni, ‘without trust, a school cannot improve and grow into the rich, nurturing micro-society needed by children and adults’

1998

SETS UP A SCHOOL FROM SCRATCH With his application to become the founding head of Burgmann Anglican School successful (at the age of 31), Browning began the enormous task of writing the curriculum and associated policies, registering the school, coordinating school construction, appointing staff, and enrolling students. Burgmann Anglican School opened the following year with 24 students from kindergarten to Year 3.

“1998 was an incredibly busy year. I bought my first mobile phone and would spend lunchtimes calling prospective parents, trying to convince them to enrol their children at a school that wasn’t even built. The school building was finished the day before school was due to start.”

LAUNCHES NEW INITIATIVE TO BOLSTER TEACHING QUALITY With the belief that the quality of an education is dependent on the quality of its teachers, Browning opened the Centre for Research, Innovation and Future Development, a vehicle for providing teachers the forum for continued growth and learning. Well over 100 schools have visited St Paul’s School and learnt about the work it is doing to support teachers to become exemplary in their practice.

2008

FRESH CHALLENGES IN BRISBANE With Burgmann reaching an enrolment of 1,000, a waiting list of more than 2,000, and a second campus about to open, Browning moved to Brisbane to become the Headmaster of St Paul’s School. The GFC hit and began to have an impact on enrolments.

“I wanted to know what it would be like running an established school and seeing what impact my leadership would have on an existing culture, rather than building a culture from the ground up.”

1990

ENTERS THE PROFESSION

Browning’s first classroom experience was with 28 kindergarten children at Gib Gate, part of the Winifred West group of schools. Feeling like he was thrown in the deep end, he taught the children of rock singer Jimmy Barnes, INXS manager Mark Opitz and comedian FINDS HIS WAY Billy Birmingham (The 12th Man).

AND OPTS FOR Browning continued his studies externally, EDUCATION completing his Degree of Education in 1991.

1987

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1997

FIRST HINT OF SENIOR LEVEL SUCCESS Browning began looking for opportunities for headship.

The first opportunity was for the position of head of St Paul’s Anglican School in Bald Hills, QLD. He missed out on the role but put himself forward for, and was appointed to, a position on their school council.

“I was totally under-qualified for the role and, as such, experienced my first rejection. I had no idea of what to do on a council, but learned lots by watching and listening to others.”

Browning began studying for a Bachelor of Education (Primary Teaching) at Wollongong University. Before completing his degree he was offered a full-time teaching position at an independent school in the Southern Highlands of NSW. “It was never my intention to work in the independent sector.

I always saw myself in a public school, but since that appointment I have never looked back.”

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UPFRONT

HOT TOPIC

What’s behind Australia’s declining performance in maths, science and reading?

Robert Randall

Lila Mularczyk

Natasha Watt

CEO ACARA

Principal Merrylands High School

Mathematics teacher, deputy principal Woonona High School

The 2015 NAPLAN results show that overall, at a national level, there is little change in student achievement in literacy and numeracy. Data from the National Assessment Program – Science Literacy also indicates stable achievement since testing commenced in 2003. While there have been some national improvements in Year 3 reading (a statistically significant increase from 2008) and in Year 5 reading, I think that the general community would like to see more than stability.

Improvement in test results comes about when student learning improves.

The F-10 Australian Curriculum for English, mathematics, science and history has been steadily introduced across states and territories since 2011. I am confident that the attention being given to the national curriculum and its implementation provides a foundation for improving learning outcomes.

Schools continue to embed a strong and informed practice of data and evidence analysis around student achievement and learning needs. This is in a context of a myriad of information sources to meet learning needs. NAPLAN data as one source contributes to a broader and deeper understanding of student learning for individual learners and within a student cohort locally, state or nationally.

NAPLAN and National Assessment Program – Science Literacy data as isolated data sources are the only national benchmark we have. These results indicate a modest growth in student results in literacy and numeracy and similarly with the science data.

Targeted resourcing and funding such as the recommendation of the Gonski Review are seeing improved results in areas of learning. The certainty of Gonski is an imperative for continued improvement of student achievement.

In my experience, this situation will only improve when ongoing quality professional learning can be afforded to teachers.

Students excel when there are excellent resources available for students to use, when a school can create more authentic learning experiences, and when a school can guarantee that all students are able to receive what they need.

There have been decades of poor investment in public schools.

When I started teaching in 1996 I would spend approximately $2,000 annually out of my own salary to make classroom resources.

In my school, we can report that Gonski is improving student learning and life outcomes. This is so across NSW. It will take time to reverse the effects of underinvestment and the resultant widening gap in student outcomes.

SCHOOL PERFORMANCE PISA’s 2016 results found that, overall, about a quarter of 15-year-olds tested in the OECD countries (the industrialised West, Japan and Australia) performed at low levels in at least one of the three subjects tested – mathematics, reading, and science – and 12% performed at low levels on all three.

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The edu

The inaugural Education Report surveys senior education professionals around Australia about the strategic issues and challenges facing the education sector.

The Education Report will be published in the June issue of The Educator magazine and will also be available online.

Entries close Friday 15 April www.educatoronline.com.au The education 2016.indd 1 11 10-11_Head toreport head_SUBBED.indd

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THE BIG INTERVIEW

ROGER HERBERT

A CAMPUS LIKE NO OTHER What Geelong Grammar’s secluded Timbertop campus lacks in modern technology it makes up for with a rich and unique education in self-reliance and teamwork. Brett Henebery chats to head of campus Roger Herbert

LOOKING INSIDE the average 21st century classroom, students are sitting in collaborative spaces, engaging with their learning though the use of smartphones, iPads, laptops and stylus pens. While Geelong Grammar School prides itself on being a savvy 21st century school, you will find none of these devices at its secluded Year 9 campus, Timbertop.

On its scenic grounds, nestled in the foothills of the beautiful Victorian Alps, students are very much unplugged from the digital world. When they’re not inside the classroom learning in a traditional face-toface environment, they’re enjoying rigorous outdoor activities like hiking, skiing, canoeing, rafting, rogaining and camping.

Through these activities, Timbertop aims to show children how to grow into young men and women in a resourceful and independent

way, without the distraction of modern technology. It is for this reason that this unique campus considers itself to be a “challenging rite of passage to a rewarding adult life”.

A ‘resiliency-building program’ Throughout its 63-year history, Timbertop has evolved into what its head of campus, Roger Herbert, calls “a resilience-building program” for its 237 students, comprising 135 boys and 102 girls. While Timbertop is located far from metropolitan areas, that does not deter interstate – or international – families from enrolling their children at the campus. Fifty per cent of the students at Timbertop come from outside Victoria and overseas.

“We have students from lots of countries with their own standards, expectations, value systems and religions. In one way that is

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIMBERTOP After outgrowing several Geelong locations the school relocated to a 245-hectare site on the edge of Corio Bay in 1914. Nearly three decades later in 1953, Geelong Grammar established Timbertop, inspired by the philosophies of German educator Kurt Hahn. After serving as the principal of Salem, a private boarding school in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, Hahn founded the famous Gordonstoun School in Scotland, based on the four pillars of internationalism, challenge, responsibility and service. It was Hahn’s courage and vision that inspired Sir James Darling, the founder of Timbertop. Darling wrote that the theory of Timbertop was that adolescent boys “could develop by themselves, out of the usual school machine”. In Darling’s view, if students were placed in a different and less clement environment, they “should undertake responsibility for themselves and be given the challenges of a man’s life”.

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absolutely beautiful. That diversity excites us,” Herbert says.

“However, the other side of it is that we have to make sure they can all operate under the one umbrella here in a cohesive and communal way with each other.”

To achieve this, Timbertop’s staff spend a lot of time and effort in the first few weeks of a foreign student’s arrival at the school on acknowledging where they have come from and explaining to them the campus’s values and expectations.

The school’s campus had a very basic beginning, Herbert adds. In those early days, Year 10 boys stayed in tents and built the campus together.

“That of course can’t be done these days, but it was a great organic beginning and one that really captured the imaginations of the boys who were doing it, as well as their parents and the broader community,” Herbert says.

Unit life is at the core of the Timbertop experience. There are 16 units at the campus (nine for boys and seven for girls), where students live and learn. In the spirit of Timbertop’s resilience-building philosophy, the students are responsible for the day-to-day running of the units, nurturing self-reliance and cooperative endeavour.

“I think it’s fair to say that Timbertop started off as an experiment, but I think that experiment has now been proven to be very successful. As the head of Timbertop, my job is to continue on with that vision. We often refer to Kurt Hahn as our philosophical anchor, so

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“I think it’s fair to say that Timbertop started off as an experiment, but I think that experiment has now been proven to be very successful”

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THE BIG INTERVIEW

ROGER HERBERT

“We talk to our students about being like a tennis ball: you bounce back from adversity as opposed to being like an egg where you hit the ground and shatter” we don’t drift around too much. We know what we’re trying to do and how to do it.”

Timbertop ‘more important than ever’ Referring to the rapid shift of the educational landscape in terms of technology and learning environments, Herbert says his campus has a duty to its philosophy; it must resist these trends.

“Here at Timbertop, a lot of people think we are digitally isolated. To some degree, students don’t have mobile phones or access to the internet. Our rationale behind that is that we want our students to go from being a child to an adult,” he explains, adding that learning interpersonal skills and self-discovery in a natural environment is

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crucial to mental and emotional growth.

Herbert adds that Australian youth over the last 20 years have been “very lucky” because their country has been in an affluent state, and often students “don’t need or want for too much”.

“The program we have here fills that void of affluence where students learn to deal with hardship, because as we all know, everyone at some point in their life goes through difficult times,” he says.

“We all have bad days, weeks, months or even years; it’s about navigating through those difficult times in the best way possible.

We talk to our students about being like a tennis ball: you bounce back from adversity as opposed to being like an egg where you hit the ground and shatter.”

When it comes to preparing its students for the hi-tech and challenging world that awaits them once they complete their studies, Timbertop aims to build the child from the ground up, investing in their ability to think critically before swamping them with gadgets and the online echo chamber.

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“An adult generally makes their own decisions. They get information, consider it, and then make a wise choice. However, children defer to mum and dad regularly. At the end of the day, we try to get our students to make and own their own behaviour and decisions,” Herbert says.

“Geelong Grammar School’s students are immersed in technology like any other teenagers, but here we take a slight backwards step and focus on interpersonal skills like talking to people, being able to relate, having empathy, understanding and sympathy.”

Herbert says there is an “endless amount of research” showing that the social side of the current generation’s brains is not as developed as it was 30 years ago. A lot of the research, he says, indicates that this is because kids spend a lot of time in front of the computer or television, which does not develop the foundational human ability to relate to other people.

“While this wasn’t the sole rationale behind Timbertop, it is what makes us more important as the years go by. The more the digital world rolls out, the more important we become because of that gap in the development of the young person,” he says.

“Having said that, this isn’t a statement against technology at all; that is the way of the world and students need to move into the digital world because that is the area a lot of jobs are going to be centred around in 10–15 years.”

One of the educational vehicles Timbertop uses to achieve its goals is ‘positive education’.

The campus has a comprehensive program with 10 modules teaching students about communication skills such as active, constructive responding, which involves actively listening to the other person and being interested in what they are saying.

“If you don’t go into that little square enough, your relationship with that other person will begin to deteriorate. We go through these skills and assess our students on them to find out whether they’re using and retaining them,” Herbert says.

Excellence through continuity Under a recent pilot test designed to evaluate basic literacy and numeracy skills, almost

one in 10 trainee teachers failed to pass, a homework; and are the classes engaging? result Federal Education Minister Simon “That goes back to the staff member and at Birmingham said was concerning. the end of the year I have a meeting with that To ensure the best professional practice is staff member who brings that portfolio to me,” carried out by his own staff, Herbert says Herbert says. “I don’t pass criticism. I thank his executive familiarises all new staff with them for being involved, ask them what they’ve the values and philosophies learnt about the process and the EDUCATION that underpin Timbertop’s ways in which they can change.”

OUTSIDE THE position as an elite and While Timbertop only NORM reputable school. started this process last year, it “When we interview or is already looking to make employ a teacher, we explain some tweaks in 2016 that will the history, philosophy and further improve teaching and expectations of Timbertop. learning at the school.

We have a mentoring program Herbert explains that Timbertop’s students are that helps our teachers Timbertop has the ‘triple responsible for the day-to-day understand what we’re all running of the campus’s 16 boarding treat’ of an academic program, about. That’s the first part,” a pastoral care program, and a units, to nurture self-reliance and says Herbert. personal development proco-operative endeavour.

“The second part involves a gram, which together enhance performance and development the development of students program which has a number and staff. of key components. The first “We’re now thinking about In total, students camp for between involves two goals: the school whether there is a perfor50 and 55 nights during the year. goal – which for this year is mance and development proThe most important activity, in differentiation – and a gram we could establish in the terms of time and in the minds of personal goal, which is pastoral program and also the students, is hiking. whatever the staff member the co-curricular, which for chooses. So, for example, the most schools is the sporting staff member will grade program but for us is the outthemselves on differentiation door program [see boxout].

While the Outdoors Program and then move up against There’s a lot in there but we’re dominates the weekend, for five the AITSL standards to the working our way through it,” days a week students are involved he says. next level.” in classes with a Year 9 timetable The executive then Looking forward, Herbert much like any other school. conducts ‘walk-throughs’ in recognises the pressure that which staff who are teaching schools similar to his might the same discipline observe come under to jump on the one another for 10 minutes. digital bandwagon and adapt.

Timbertop has a strong emphasis The logic behind this process However, he warns that on ‘positive education’, which is is for the school’s staff to get Timbertop will not be doing concerned with developing the ideas they can incorporate the same. belief, resources and personal into their own classes.

“We’re very conscious that skills necessary for its students to the teaching landscape is Then there is the lead more engaged and 360-degree review which changing very quickly and we meaningful lives. involves another staff memneed to be up to speed with ber who, on invitation, comes that, but we have a philosophy in and reviews that lesson. Students then which is different from most institutions so we answer survey questions about their teacher don’t want to step outside our philosophy. through Survey Monkey. The questions are: “With that being said, there have to be do they turn up on time; do they understand some constraints on what we can – and my learning style; do they set regular should – do.”

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COVER STORY

RISING STARS 2016

The next generation of education leaders have arrived.

In The Educator’s inaugural Rising Stars list 2016, we recognise the industry’s best and brightest talent under 40, who together prove that the future of education in Australia is in safe hands

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WELCOME TO The Educator’s inaugural Rising Stars list for 2016.

Last year, we asked the market to name the up-andcoming leaders under 40 making their mark in the fastchanging business and vocation of education. The result?

An inspiring showcase of young principals, deputy principals and department heads from across Australia, who together prove the future of education is in safe hands.

The Educator’s Rising Stars have been nominated by colleagues and peers for their expertise, strength of

character, willingness to innovate, their passion and their vision. They also have another trait in common – their ability to lead. They do not just show a way forward, but engage their communities in order to make it real.

Our Rising Stars did not seek recognition. They are the leaders making a difference day-in and day-out in their school communities, in an effort to improve the lives of their students, and often the education system as a whole.

However, The Educator would like to take this opportunity to bring their achievements into the spotlight.

RISING STARS INDEX NAME

PAGE

SCHOOL

NAME

PAGE

SCHOOL

Apanah, Cath

19

Montrose Bay High

Hyndman, Daniel

22

Woori Yallock Primary School

Biddle, Nicolas

18

Yass High School

Jayne, Penny

26

Elsternwick Primary School

Blythman, Joel

18

Lowanna College

Kapsimalis, Sofia

21

Endeavour Sports High School

Bremner, Helen

19

Trinity Grammar School

Kendall, Kristy

18

Toorak College

Drago, Andrew

18

Melbourne Girls Grammar

Martin, Gerry

25

St Michael's Grammar School

Dummett, Ross

21

Endeavour Sports High School

McDonald, Cain

25

Tatachilla Lutheran College

Ellis, Peter

19

TC Templestowe College

McGee, Penelope

25

Wiripaang Public School

Fullbrook, Kevin

20

Murrumba State Secondary College Quinlan, Yvonne

23

Rosehill Public School

Giudice, Belinda

21

Merrylands High School

Haines, Jackie

21

Winters Flat Primary School

Raymond, Justin

26

Pymble Ladies' College

Hockings, Gareth

21

Wyrallah Road Public School

Tate, Brad

26

Mount Ousley Public School

Hodges, David

19

Beachport Primary School

Taylor, Cameron

24

Brighton Grammar School

Hoens, Peter

22

Ormiston College

Wang, Stanley

27

Haileybury

Holt, Nicole

22

St Clair High School

Wilson, Joel

22

Cudgegong Valley Public School

Hornby, Michael

25

Mabel Park State High School

Wood, Joel

26

The Forest High School

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COVER STORY

RISING STARS 2016

NICOLAS BIDDLE

JOEL BLYTHMAN

ANDREW DRAGO

Year 9/10 adviser

Assistant principal

Assistant director of senior years

Yass High School (NSW)

Lowanna College (VIC)

Melbourne Girls Grammar (VIC)

Nicolas Biddle is an engaged and highly effective Yass High School rising star, who has become a ‘positive and influential team player’ at a faculty and wider school level.

Teaching ICT and mathematics, Biddle is described as ‘highly motivated, well organised, knowledgeable, confident and professional’, with an expectation he will rise to head teacher level. He is noted for being able to engage the willing and professional support of staff across the school in technology, recently demonstrating his clear-sighted leadership in the development of resources for a new cross-faculty Year 9 project-based learning program. His personable nature and strong rapport with students is balanced by thorough purposeful lesson preparation and articulate delivery, as well as a commitment to professional standards. Biddle regularly demonstrates genuine concern for student wellbeing and academic progress.

Joel Blythman is more than an assistant principal. At 33 years old, his outstanding leadership skills, dedication to innovative and strategic thinking and extremely organised approach have seen him take on responsibility for Lowanna College’s daily operations, international program and special programs. On an operational level, he implemented a new Student Behaviour Management System, designed to create a consistency in classroom management and a more orderly learning environment.

He has also grown the international program, having successfully obtained funding for the DET Young Leaders to China Program, which will take a group of Year 9 students to China for six weeks this year. He recently oversaw a trip to a Taizhou Sister School, which resulted in a language program, and was instrumental in acquiring a Hanban teacher for a Confucius classroom program.

‘Transformational leader’ Andrew Drago has modelled and encouraged a school culture of innovation at Melbourne Girls Grammar, which is greatly benefitting students in their senior years. Drago has a passion for analysing and utilising data, and has successfully developed projects that have been able to use evidence to intervene with students at risk, identify underperforming students and target their support, as well as ensure students are working at or beyond their capacity. Drago is also a deep thinker on teaching and potential, encouraging teachers to subscribe to a ‘growth mindset’ that champions achievement through hard work and feedback, and showing teachers the impact teaching and the curriculum has on students even years later. Drago has assisted with a revised senior years’ program incorporating data on wellbeing, to educate students on social, emotional and physical health.

KRISTY KENDALL Principal Toorak College (VIC)

At 36 years of age, Kristy Kendall is one of the youngest – if not the youngest – principals in Victoria.

However, she sees age as no barrier to taking on a role that is increasingly viewed as one of the toughest that society has to offer. When it comes to motivating students’ interest and performance in STEM education, Kendall is as driven as they come. Together with her executive, Kendall is helping students from prep to Year 12 gain crucial STEM skills through the school’s ‘digi-zone’ where they can practice innovation, creation and problem-solving. Kendall says she wants girls to “dream up their futures and start making their own rules”.

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3/03/2016 2:18:12 PM

HELEN BREMNER

CATH APANAH

PETER ELLIS

Head of eLearning

Assistant principal

Assistant principal – learning

Trinity Grammar School (NSW)

Montrose Bay High (TAS)

TC Templestowe College (VIC)

Helen Bremner is responsible for the future vision and implementation of eLearning at Trinity Grammar. Thanks to her agile leadership style, the last two years have seen her manage a team of eLearning integrators through the successful articulation, policy development, promotion and implementation of a vision for eLearning, involving the utilisation of a wide range of digital technologies and tools. A Google Certified Trainer and a Canvas Ambassador, Bremner’s constant search for ‘best practice’ leads to ongoing development of eLearning practice and ICT frameworks, and she is sought after for speaking engagements, such as the AIS ICT Leadership Conference, CanvasCon and Teachmeets. Regularly sharing knowledge with other schools and Trinity staff, Bremner is to Trinity an ‘effective leader’, ‘innovator’, and ‘invaluable asset’. In 2015, she successfully rolled out a K-12 1:1 device program.

Cath Apanah is in every respect an outstanding education leader. Described as ‘adaptable and flexible’ while ‘leading with innovation and insight’, Apanah has won the respect of staff and students with her proactive approach. For example, she went above and beyond in developing a new staff induction package, which includes a mentoring program for staff in their first three years of teaching, has helped build a high functioning English and History learning area team, and also led the Grade 7 team towards better and more decisive behaviour management. Apanah has presented for ACEL’s Tasmanian branch on the subject of developing teacher quality through feedback and coaching. While a high achiever with strong initiative, very high work ethic and natural high expectations of others, Apanah is known as inclusive, committed to teamwork, and supporting all to achieve their best.

Peter Ellis is considered to be a significant driving force behind the growth of TC Templestowe College from 286 local students six years ago to 740 students in 2016. Ellis has become widely known for his pioneering approach to individualised learning, which has seen the introduction of Individualised Learning Plans for all students, the removal of year levels, the creation of a student curriculum committee, and the introduction of a flipped classroom model throughout the school. Not stopping at the school gate, Ellis helped create the TC Consultancy, which spreads the message that students should take control of their learning well beyond school. With the help of paid student TC consultants, he delivers day-long professional development programs to school leadership teams, and has helped principals and system leaders from every state and territory in Australia, as well as New Zealand.

DAVID HODGES Principal Beachport Primary School (SA)

David Hodges was promoted from a Year 3 position at an independent school to the principal role at Beachport Primary School because of his reputation for being a ‘wonderful educator’, and, ever since, the new school community has been appreciating his dedication and vision.

With a whole career ahead of him, as he is still in his early 30s, Hodges is considered ‘an inspiring leader’, who is influencing his new school to make significant changes. This includes a strong focus on improved learning outcomes for children, as well as the professional growth of his staff. Hodges began his career at The Hills Christian Community School, where he rose to become co-ordinator of school improvement before his move to Beachport.

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COVER STORY

RISING STARS 2016

KEVIN FULLBROOK Deputy principal Murrumba State Secondary College (QLD)

Kevin Fullbrook was one of the youngest deputy principals in the state when he joined Murrumba State Secondary College in 2012 at the age of 32, and has since been driving an innovation agenda that is primarily built around establishing a culture of ‘service learning’ throughout the college from Year 7 to Senior. Large numbers of students are now completing formal certificates in Active Volunteering, which has become the most popular elective subject choice in Year 10 and 11, and staff benefit by having one day of ‘volunteering leave’ during the year to engage in areas of need in the local community. Fullbrook’s efforts have led to him presenting the ‘great outcomes’ of his work to the ‘Think Tank on Global Education’, hosted by the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the National Volunteering Conference.

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BELINDA GIUDICE

JACKIE HAINES

GARETH HOCKINGS

Co-principal

Leading teacher

Principal

Merrylands High School (NSW)

Winters Flat Primary School (VIC)

Wyrallah Road Public School (NSW)

Belinda Giudice is described as ‘amazing, talented, organised and capable’ in her work as co-principal of the large and diverse Merrylands High School, and is known for regularly giving of her time to assist other secondary deputy principals in NSW. In fact, Giudice has acted as a connector for secondary deputy principals right across the state over the past 18 months, with her development and establishment of the Deputy Principal Connect System on the web. This innovative initiative now allows colleagues and peers to have important conversations about work challenges. It’s the ultimate peer support tool. Giudice continues to update and maintain the website in addition to her Merrylands High School responsibilities, with what are described as ‘simply amazing’ IT skills.

Without Giudice, this ‘outstanding support’ now available online in NSW may not exist.

After only 18 months in the role of leading teacher at Winters Flat Primary School, Jackie Haines has already led a whole school change in curriculum that has paid off in improved data across the school. ‘Passionate about education’ and ‘improving outcomes for all students’, Haines brings her own interest and research into international best practice to the school, and has used this to oversee the school’s adoption of New Zealand Maths, which resulted in the school becoming a leader in the state in this area. Said to support her colleagues with knowledge and mentoring, Haines has helped engineer a dramatic change in the teaching practice across the whole school.

Her leadership potential has been recognised by the Victorian education department, with her acceptance into the competitive ‘Unlocking Potential’ program run by Bastow Institute of Educational Leadership.

A principal who ‘leads by example’ and has ‘the ability to inspire teachers to be better at what they do’, Gareth Hockings is focused on leading Lismore’s largest primary school through a period of educational change.

Bringing a high level of professionalism to interactions with the school community, Hockings has developed strong connections that ensure wide involvement in school planning and a unified, long-term vision.

Hockings also works tirelessly to ensure staff are at the forefront of educational change, in line with his philosophy to make ‘the next thing they do, the best thing they do’. Recently, he was one of a small number of school leaders selected to be a part of a professional growth study working closely with international colleagues, school education directors, and university academics in an effort to improve school performance on the North Coast of NSW.

ROSS DUMMETT & SOPHIA KAPSIMALIS Deputy principals Endeavour Sports High School (NSW)

Ross Dummett and Sophia Kapsimalis are described inseparably as a deputy principal ‘dream team’. Together, they have shown energy, dedication and leadership since joining in 2012, when Endeavour Sports High School was in ‘desperate need’ of leadership. Since then, they have worked some ‘incredibly long hours’ with great honesty and integrity to drive a noticeable change in school culture, by engaging and building rapport with the community and students, and making a number of sound and uncompromising decisions. Dubbed ‘principals-in-waiting’, they are said to blend innovative thinking with pragmatism, and the ability to stand up for what they believe in with strong loyalty. Together, Dummett and Kapsimalis have made Endeavour Sports ‘a better place’, with a rise in student numbers, higher attendance and enhanced community perceptions.

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COVER STORY

RISING STARS 2016

PETER HOENS

NICOLE HOLT

JOEL WILSON

Head of English

Head teacher – teaching and learning

Assistant principal

Ormiston College (QLD)

St Clair High School (NSW)

Cudgegong Valley Public School (NSW)

Peter Hoens has a reputation for an encouraging management and teaching style and for being forward-thinking. Hoens has led the innovative integration of ICT into teachers’ work in English, with one example being the reinvigoration of a unit on Myths and Legends: The Hero’s Journey, for which the assessment is now a collaborativelyplanned, multi-narrative ebook. With kind support, guidance and encouragement, and a ‘wisdom beyond his years’ at 35, Hoens successfully manages a staff aged between 28 and 60 years of age, despite the challenges that come from varying degrees of ICT competencies, years of experience in the teaching profession and varying attitudes to change. Staff know him for empowering teachers to take risks with his blend of instructional and shared leadership.

Nicole Holt is an ‘outstanding educational practitioner’ who is expected to become a prominent educational leader of the future.

After a nine-year career in teaching, her role as head teacher of teaching and learning at St Clair High School has seen her make an ‘extraordinary impact’ on both students and staff. She is singled out for her ability to understand a wide range of issues in complex tasks, and being able to determine appropriate strategies with a minimum of fuss. Holt also has a reputation for going above and beyond what is expected, which has built a level of complete confidence in her among colleagues at the school. Holt is commended for her energy, enthusiasm and passion, her personal and professional integrity and for her ability to act as an inspiration to all educators at St Clair High School.

Joel Wilson is a firm believer in the need to integrate ICT into today’s education, and as his school’s resident ICT evangelist, he is benefitting the learning and lives of both his students and his staff by showing them its ‘relevance and significance’.

Wilson is a technology advocate and a regular ICT user in the classroom, from using interactive whiteboard resources to holding virtual excursions with students and using iPod technology to complement learning in class. He has gone even further with students, initiating computer programming courses that have seen him devote his own lunch times to helping students discover the joy of coding.

Wilson also supports and inspires staff across the school by troubleshooting ICT problems and mentoring less confident staff.

DANIEL HYNDMAN Principal Woori Yallock Primary School (VIC)

Daniel Hyndman has managed to first halt and then reverse a period of decline at Woori Yallock Primary School, by successfully turning around the learning growth of students. With student numbers again starting to rise, and results that are well above expectations for the school, Hyndman was asked to present at the Australian Council for Educational Leaders Conference in 2014 on the topic, ‘How to raise literacy outcomes through a whole of school approach’. He is also presenting this year at the Creating a High Performance Learning Culture international conference. Thanks to Hyndman, the school has been acknowledged as being in the top 59 schools in Victoria and top 300 for learning growth in numeracy, is above the state average in nearly all areas measured in the Attitudes to School Survey and has also exceeded the state average for like schools in a number of dimensions of NAPLAN.

With he s ool ulture ing in state eded

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YVONNE QUINLAN Assistant principal Rosehill Public School (NSW)

Yvonne Quinlan is known for championing innovative practice at Rosehill Public School as she seeks to bring about a true, 21st Century learning environment.

‘Globally connected’ and ‘research-driven’, Quinlan shows her commitment to making a difference to student lives through the creation of responsive, engaging and real-world-connected programs that challenge students to reflect, create, think, collaborate, design and risk-take on their way to achieving their personal best. One of the first teachers to obtain Lead Teacher status with BOSTES, she is on her way to becoming an accredited examiner for Highly Accomplished status, and benefits the Parramatta community of schools through her ‘deep curriculum knowledge’. Quinlan’s vision has seen her lead walkthroughs for visiting educators, build teacher-reflective practice and evaluate whole school directions, and she has been asked to lead conceptual programming and instruction by the district of schools.

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COVER STORY

RISING STARS 2016

CAMERON TAYLOR Head of eLearning and IT Brighton Grammar School (VIC)

A big thinker, innovator and problem solver, Cameron Taylor has impressed his colleagues and community by overhauling how his school thinks about ‘knowing your student’. In what has been labelled a significant contribution and one that will ‘quite simply enhance the likelihood of each boy reaching or exceeding his potential’, Taylor has reinvented the way the school uses data by creating his own database and reporting mechanism that builds a comprehensive student profile.

Mixing a range of internal assessment data, external data including NAPLAN, and touchstone contacts with teachers, Taylor has brought the full picture of each student together in a ‘meaningful way’, and made it transparently available to all. It has already improved student decisions, teacher focus and, ultimately, learning outcomes.

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3/03/2016 2:19:19 PM

MICHAEL HORNBY Acting principal Mabel Park State High School (QLD)

Michael Hornby has moved into an acting principal role at Mabel Park State High School at the age of only 35, thanks to an already-inspiring career working in schools in similar low socioeconomic areas. Approaching education with the mindset that every student should have the opportunity to succeed no matter their background, Hornby used his previous substantive post as deputy principal at Ipswich State High School to make a powerful difference to student lives over a five-year period. Some of his achievements and career highlights to date include launching an extensive Teacher Peer Coaching Program that was able to dramatically improve student results, the establishment of a $5m Trade Training Facility for students, and the building of a highly successful Sporting Excellence Program.

CAIN MCDONALD

GERRY MARTIN

Principal

Head of humanities, director of learning (Years 10-12)

Tatachilla Lutheran College (SA)

A principal of Lutheran colleges since the young age of 27, Cain McDonald left a mark on his first school when he introduced new classes and streams while overseeing critical building projects that attracted millions of dollars in government funding. In 2015, at age 35, McDonald was appointed principal of Tatachilla Lutheran College, and has already overseen a restructure of leadership across the whole school, rolled out a 1:1 iPad program, commenced the development of a framework and understanding of the culture of a thinking school, introduced positive psychology practices in the school, and is embarking on a full master plan and strategic review of the college. McDonald has done all this with a leadership style that shows ‘wisdom beyond his years’, due to his ‘measured team approach to decisionmaking’. His leadership is variously described as empowering, approachable, supportive and compassionate, and he has gained high respect among staff by fostering professional and personal respect in his team.

PENELOPE MCGEE Assistant principal

St Michael’s Grammar School (VIC)

Wiripaang Public School (NSW)

When students study history in Australian schools, they will be benefitting from Gerry Martin’s influence on how it is taught. Having joined St Michael’s Grammar School in 2007, Martin was appointed head of humanities in 2012, with achievements in the area including being chosen to consult on the design and review of the Australian history curriculum, and serving on the History Teachers’ Association of Victoria Board from 2010–2015 and as its Vice-President from 2012–2015. Some of Martin’s other accomplishments include rewriting the VCE Revolutions Study Design and all Foundation to Year 10 skills, as well as designing and collating the Extended Investigation, a new cross-curriculum subject that is being introduced in 2016 at St Michael’s Grammar.

He was recognised last year with a second semester secondment to the VCAA to act in the role of curriculum manager (history and civics), and has been promoted at his school this year to director of learning (Years 10–12).

Penelope McGee is an ‘intelligent, insightful, collegial, caring young educator who strives for equity and quality in NSW public schools every day’. McGee had a difficult challenge on her hands when called on to help amalgamate two complex schools into Wiripaang Public School, but is said to have shown outstanding leadership while acting as a ‘collegial and decisive change agent’. With a need to rebuild the school from the ground up, McGee has been instrumental in putting in place the systems and structures required, including encouraging quality, effectiveness and purpose in newly built policies and procedures, such as the school’s early learning and performance development frameworks, and designing effective, choice-driven teacher professional learning. As a leader of Early Action for Success at the school, she has engineered a powerful shift in literacy and numeracy results in K-2.

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COVER STORY

RISING STARS 2016 JUSTIN RAYMOND Dean of curriculum innovation (K-12) Pymble Ladies’ College (NSW)

Justin Raymond is lauded for his ‘clear vision for quality, personalised 21st Century Learning’ in his position as dean of curriculum innovation (K-12) at Pymble Ladies’ College. Raymond is said to pursue a learning agenda that reaches into all facets of student learning, from academic excellence, sporting and creative endeavours, and community service, to other softer qualities like leadership skills and holistic student wellbeing during an age of change. With a background as a SharePoint developer and software design educator, as well as being director of innovative technologies at Pymble Ladies’ College before moving into his current role, Raymond is said to also have that quality that is so important to ensuring the success of any IT project or vision: he has the ability to engage colleagues to work together to deliver it.

PENNY JAYNE Assistant principal Elsternwick Primary School (VIC)

Penny Jayne is well known at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education in the US. That’s because her work with Harvard’s Data Wise Project has led to her being invited back repeatedly, and as the only non-American accredited Data Wise Coach, this year she will mentor incoming Teaching Fellows and present Elsternwick Primary School’s work as an elementary school case study. Jayne realised since her Masters in school leadership that despite the overwhelming volume and access to student data, teachers and school leaders experience difficulty using data to inform the planning, teaching and evaluation of instructional interventions.

After studying at Harvard, Jayne used the Data Wise Improvement Process to create an adult learning community at her own school, as the foundation for teacher-led action research. Her success is now championed by Harvard, and Jayne has also been recognised by ACARA, with an invitation to represent Victoria in their Math Proficiencies Project.

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JOEL WOOD

BRAD TATE

Head teacher, teaching and learning

Assistant principal

The Forest High School (NSW)

Mt Ousley Public School (NSW)

Joel Wood continues to strive to enhance his knowledge of effective pedagogy as head teacher of teaching and learning, having already shown his ‘outstanding educational leadership’ in leading an embrace of the flipped classroom and new technology.

Wood has personally designed and overseen the construction of two 21st Century learning spaces, and has implemented a BYOD policy that has resulted in excellent results for students. Staff have benefitted from his ‘highly collaborative’ approach, ‘hard work’ and ‘professionalism’, as he has sought to build the capacity of others by sharing expertise, teaching resources, and leading professional development in order to enshrine authentic project-based learning for students. Wood is said to show a strong commitment to achieving excellence through his work ethic and his dedication to improving public education as a whole.

Brad Tate’s peers think he is someone who ‘genuinely cares’ about ‘making a difference in the lives of everyone around him’. With a reflective and experimental approach to school management and pedagogy, Tate has impressed school staff and students with approaches such as allowing a high degree of student choice within classes, in an effort to draw them beyond comfort zones. Tate demonstrated vision and determination in introducing a 1:1 iPad initiative for more than 100 students in Kindergarten to Year 2, which involved preparation, communication and collaboration with his team of teachers and the school community. He is also noticed for leading within and across schools, reinventing student reports to better reflect pedagogical beliefs, working with others to create video that promotes the ideologies underpinning the school’s core work, and managing complex resources.

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3/03/2016 2:19:33 PM

STANLEY WANG Head of languages Haileybury (VIC)

As a passionate polyglot himself, 27-year-old Stanley Wang is making a name for himself at Haileybury as head of languages, where he manages a team of 46 across three campuses in the development of the language curriculum and pedagogy. Teaching Mandarin, Japanese and French – and fluent in all three – Wang forsook an early career in the Treasury in Canberra to become an educator.

He has since developed a clear vision for the purpose of languages – Mandarin in particular – in Australia, as well as the roots of a successful language curriculum. His impact on Haileybury has included the majority of students now continuing with language study in the post-compulsory years, as well as informing the development of curriculum and pedagogy through data and student feedback. Wang’s achievements also include being a leader in the Teach for Taiwan program, for which he translated and adapted the ‘Teach For’ course into Chinese for the Taiwanese context.

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FEATURES

RECRUITMENT

GET SMART Growing teacher shortages in critical subjects mean schools will need to get smarter than ever about recruitment. The Educator asks Smart Teachers how to find the right people SMART TEACHERS Brisbane director Tyson Wood has been recruiting teachers in Australia for 12 years. However, he’s never witnessed a teacher shortage quite like this.

“When I started, it wasn’t difficult to source teachers. The challenge was sifting through so many candidates and ensuring you found the right one from a broad bunch,” Wood says.

Now he sees schools feeling the pain of a growing teacher shortage. “Candidate supply numbers in many subjects are decreasing and will continue to do so over the next few years,” he says. “The decrease commenced in 2014, and though demand dipped slightly in late 2015 to offset that, there will be a long-term decrease in supply and increase in demand.”

There are a number of factors contributing to this. First, there’s the wave of mass retirements coming from Baby Boomer teachers, who have so far been content to prolong their teaching careers. Then, there’s a decrease in graduate teachers in certain subjects, as well as more teachers staying put in their existing jobs and resisting any opportunity to move.

In many cases, the problem reflects better fortunes for teachers themselves. “Less moving and shaking by experienced teachers reflects the increase in job satisfaction brought on by increased remuneration, better professional development and the widespread school improvement initiatives. There is also greater parity from school to school,” Wood says.

But it also means growing pressure on schools who want to successfully recruit quality teachers. “For these reasons and more, schools who expand their reach when recruiting, while working collaboratively with other schools or external agents, will avoid

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3 BIG RECRUITMENT MISTAKES TO AVOID 1 Rushing to advertise Schools that want to avoid re-advertising or not getting a wide enough pool of candidates should never rush to advertise. Though they might be dealing with time pressure, perhaps at a difficult time of year, Smart Teachers still recommends sitting down first to outline a strategy on how they will advertise the role and come up with the right information – like desired skills, personality traits and job descriptions – to achieve a more successful recruitment campaign.

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Putting your eggs in one basket Rather than advertise on one well-known or favourite online job source and then picking the best candidate from the bunch, Smart Teachers says schools need to ask whether the best of the bunch is actually the best person out there.

They should consider using a range of different sources of advertising or use an external third party, such as Smart Teachers, to beef up their long list and short list and to avoid re-advertising, which impacts the school’s brand.

Failing to vet Do you really know your candidates?

Schools often do less than they should when it comes to vetting potential hires. Smart Teachers says schools can benefit from learning more about candidates, either from going further back with reference checking, or asking better questions against relevant criteria, to maximise the change of a successful hire. This includes ensuring child protection checks and teacher licence validations are integrated into the process.

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re-advertising, prolonged recruitment campaigns and make better hires,” Wood says.

Smarter recruiting Smart Teachers specialises in recruiting quality teachers for independent, Catholic and Christian schools across Australia. With four offices in Australia – Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth – as well as international reach in New Zealand and the UK – the business is in a perfect position to see what the future of recruitment will look like.

The answer is, it will be harder, but smarter.

As recruitment becomes more uncertain and as teacher scarcity increases, schools will need to utilise best practice approaches to succeed.

Sourcing will be the first challenge. Smart Teachers, for example, works with schools to advertise strategically across local, state and national geographies – both online and in print – to achieve the desired expert teaching candidate pool. With a database of 120,000 existing teachers available for targeted recruiting, it also works with universities to attract graduates.

Vetting and validation will also be increasingly important. With Smart Teachers staffed by expert teachers, Wood says the recruiter overcomes any grey areas by ensuring all Smart Teachers candidates are screened, appraised and profiled through a ‘Smart Application’ process based on an ‘Expert Teacher Appraisal Framework’ pioneered by the business.

“It frames the 12 attributes we feel are indicative of an expert teacher, or someone on the path to expertise, and that are important for effective teaching in the classroom.”

Incorporating detailed one-on-one interviews and comprehensive reference checking, as well as verification of teacher licensing and child protection checks, Smart Teachers says it is able to compile better profiles of candidates in the market to minimise risk of a bad hire.

In future, candidates are likely to use services like Smart Teachers, to cut down on the time required to apply for new roles and to present a more holistic picture to potential employers.

“It is a free service for teachers. We get to know them, what they are looking for in a job,

and we can be strategic and tap them on the shoulder when that job comes along,” Wood says.

“The process is beneficial to candidates.

By sending a CV, they are only showing one aspect that may appeal to an employer.

Through a CV, interview, profile and reference check combined, we gather more data, and what we are sending across

This could be a result of the desire for work-life balance. “It depends on the school, but leadership positions can be very demanding, and I think because teaching jobs are also very busy, teachers aren’t wanting to take that next step up. They have that worklife balance, and fear that – rightly or wrongly – in becoming a leader they may actually jeopardise that.”

“Schools who expand their reach when recruiting, while working collaboratively with other schools or external agents, will avoid re-advertising, prolonged recruitment campaigns and make better hires” Tyson Wood, Smart Teachers compared with what candidates would normally send on their own helps them stand out from the crowd.”

Finding a leader The most difficult subjects to fill in the current market are the same as they have always been.

Maths and Science. “That will never change,” Wood says. “Within science, quality Chemistry and Physics teachers can be very hard to find, for example, and finding a candidate that is a strong fit for a top-end Maths role at Year 12 level can also be very, very difficult.”

Likewise, Design & Technology, Home Economics, Hospitality and senior English subjects. “Design and Technology is probably the hardest at the moment in most states.

Candidates are just not out there, and there are very few in comparison coming out of university.”

There is one even more important gulf opening up between candidate demand and supply that will have a greater impact on schools in future. The search for education leaders.

“In the past, there were a lot more candidates willing to put their hand up for leadership positions, or put their hand up to go down the path and develop into a leader,“ Wood says. “Now, we are just not seeing that happen as much.”

In 2015, Smart Teachers launched a Smart Leaders program to meet this challenge. “We understood from research we conducted that there is going to be a challenge in filling leadership roles like principal, deputy principal, head of department, and curriculum director roles at independent, Catholic and Christian schools throughout the country,” Woods says.

Smart Leaders is now providing tailored executive search and selection, gathering pools of leadership candidates from early aspiring leaders right through to highly experienced candidates in school leadership roles who may be wishing to make a move.

“When schools are looking to source new leaders they are able to proactively use our service and find the best possible short list and eventually make the best hire,” Wood says.

Candidates should also be willing to consider leadership. “A lot of teachers may have a misconception about what a principal does, and the scope of the work. But if you go out and poll principals – and this is true for all the principals I know – they all love their job.”

Smart Teachers serves Independent, Catholic and Christian primary and secondary schools Australia-wide, working collaboratively to help manage the increasing demand for highly qualified and passionate teachers.

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FEATURES

TECHNOLOGY REPORT

AN EXPANDING UNIVERSE The explosion of technologies available to today’s educators means students have never had more opportunity to reach their potential. The Educator speaks to some of the most interesting providers, to see the problems they are solving for schools THE K-12 education market today is in the midst of its own technology ‘Big Bang’. With a fast-expanding universe of technology options available, innovative educators have never before had so much choice to make the most of their students’ education.

Sean Richards, director of Alaress and Schoolbox, sees a future for education that will move towards a much higher level of gamification and personalisation.

“We are moving the company towards being more adaptable to individual student abilities and needs. We see a time where teachers will be acting more as mentors and tutors rather than lecturers, as they’ll be

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helping students with problems they are facing in class but not necessarily telling them all the information they need.”

Students will also learn more collaboratively, mimicking future work environments.

“Today’s workplaces require people to be adept in collaborating, working in project teams, on things that are bigger than one person,” he says. “Education will increasingly be designed around training students how to work in teams, break things down into smaller parts and achieve individual successes within a larger project.”

Technology is the catalyst for such innovations. Whether it’s the evolution of an

LMS, better and faster IT infrastructure and networks, a vaster range of content like video on demand, or better equipment in the classroom, educators are now using a range of products to connect student learning today with a better future tomorrow.

In this technology report, The Educator takes a look at just a few of the interesting products and services that are making waves in school classrooms across Australia. While budgets will always be limited, there’s one thing that’s certain: for every problem schools face, technology and the market are providing a solution.

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RIGHT CLICK Finding curriculum-relevant videos to use creatively in classrooms can be a resource-intensive exercise, but one thing’s for sure, video is here to stay WHEN EVAN Clark first launched educational video content company ClickView 13 years ago, he was asked why a student would ever watch a video on a computer.

Today, in a new age of video saturation led

by YouTube, schools are more likely to ask how they can sort through the huge amount of video available to them online to come up with curriculum-relevant material to use in the classroom.

Video still has a negative reputation in schools, having long been seen as the domain of the ‘lazy teacher’ looking to replace themselves for a lesson. However, Clark says educators increasingly realise video is one of the richest forms of communication they have available, conveying more than a textbook or static image ever can.

“The perception of video is changing. The best educators are now using short snippets of video to increase student engagement, add a bit of visual stimulus to the classroom environment, and in doing so are adding in a new way to collaborate.”

Used by 1,500 schools, ClickView has focused on eliminating many of the sticking points holding schools back from using video in the classroom, as well as helping them build, curate and store a bespoke library of educational videos.

For example, it eliminates the time-intensive process of searching for relevant videos.

“Unlike a document, you can’t just scan a video to see if it’s of value to students. You might need to watch a whole 30-minute video, only to find it’s targeted at US students or that it’s aimed more at primary schools than Year 8,” Clark says.

Then there’s ClickView’s very own Albert.

“Instead of asking teachers to search for videos using keywords, we have our own curriculum

“The perception of video is changing. The best educators are now using short snippets of video to increase student engagement” search agent Albert, who is able to go through a school’s video library and deliver results based on the part of the curriculum and specific curriculum objective that a teacher wants to teach,” he says.

Schools also avoid video because of problems with bandwidth and data traffic. Rather than have 30 children streaming from the internet, ClickView stores a school’s video library within the school, using the school’s local area network.

“When a student goes home and does flipped

classroom homework, our system reroutes the video stream so that it is coming from the video stores in the cloud,” he says.

Clark says schools can get up and running fast with the existing ClickView library, as well as by crowdsourcing from the 23,000 videos available via ClickView’s exchange platform.

Schools can then add to this by creating their own video content, whether that’s lectures, flipped classroom activities or video recordings of any type.

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FEATURES

TECHNOLOGY REPORT

SIMPLY THE BEST Choosing the right systems for your school can be confusing, but as Schoolbox’s directors know, keeping things simple is the easiest way to get the best result for your students ALARESS DIRECTOR James Leckie is often an eyewitness to the confusion schools face when trying to choose a system that will best suit their vision and their aspirations for students.

“The main point of confusion is there are a number of products out there with quite a lot of functionality overlap – and they don’t all overlap in the same places,” Leckie says. “So you might have a student management system with some additional communications and LMS-type functionality, but it can be confusing to figure out how that might compare with a dedicated LMS, or to find the right mix of solutions that align with each other.”

Alaress’s Schoolbox platform is one of the options available. In the end, Leckie says the best way for schools to engage with the technology market is to keep things simple.

Form and function Technology is transforming the way schools manage and interact with their communities. The core systems on offer break down into three types of functionality schools usually consider: Student management Primarily housing and managing all forms of student data, student management systems contain resources like attendance records, assessment results, scheduling, and relationship information. They also handle school financial management.

Communications Schools typically have a website or intranet, often combined with email or sending printed paper home. To deliver on a communications and engagement strategy, schools need a platform to communicate with

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parents, students and other stakeholders.

Learning management An LMS is primarily built to manage and enhance all aspects of a student’s learning journey, to ensure student learning outcomes are reached.

It can include a range of functions, such as content management and classroom management.

Many schools start their systems search with a desire for a modern LMS. However, Leckie warns that an LMS in isolation is not the answer.

“A stand-alone product that doesn’t integrate into the other systems doesn’t make the most of the other opportunities that are available.”

Challenges of choice Making a decision between the different systems and functionality on offer can be daunting. Alaress director Sean Richards says schools first need to establish what they really need.

“My recommendation to schools is to look at the high-level goals they are trying to achieve. Is it to improve communications, simpler in-house processes or more up-todate information?

“After establishing those high-level goals, schools should then break the decision down into clearly defined system requirements.

What we often find is schools are exploring their requirements as they go along, and the situation can become a bit of a muddle.”

Schools can also ease the challenge of

choice by simplifying their requirements.

“Sometimes we see 100-plus requirements in a tender process. It’s not feasible for a solution to address them all – or for a school to review them all – with any sort of quality,” Richards says.

If schools are able to distil their requirements down to a key list of about 10 or 20, they can vastly simplify the process of reviewing the market solutions on offer.

“When you have 100-plus requirements and you are reviewing 10 products across all of those 100 requirements, it can be very difficult to understand which does which.”

Best of the best If the end goal is technology best practice, what does that look like? Schoolbox’s directors say a few guideposts can chart the direction towards a fully functioning ecosystem.

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Culture Schools need systems to be ingrained within their culture. “Often technology can be perceived as an add-on, or something optional.

The success of a product is determined by how business-critical it becomes to the school,” Leckie says. The best systems become ‘cultural assets’ that are just a regular part of everyday school life, and in the end they serve to support the core values schools have. “If it’s part of the culture, the rest can follow.”

Technology There are two must-haves when it comes to systems technology. The first is making the platform available on all devices. “It should be technology agnostic. You shouldn’t have to find the right device or right combination of things to make it work,” Leckie says.

The other is integration. “It should be integrated into the existing information the school holds, a one-stop shop where everything is there, everything is up to date, and it is always the place to go to find out the most relevant up-to-date information. If you have separate systems and have to hunt around for data, you are losing the high level of value that that one system has.”

Leadership School leadership needs to understand the new technology and tie it back to their strategic goals and KPIs, according to Richards. “That way, they will recognise to achieve those goals they need to resource the product on an ongoing basis and ensure they build that culture through the school.”

With leadership understanding and direction, schools open themselves up for better measurement. “For example, they can track the communications going out to parents and how many of them are reading it. This level of measurement is something new to schools but is important to the success of a product.”

Learning In the end, it all comes down to student learning outcomes. Best practice means that schools are actively looking at how to use their systems to transform the way they teach and deliver the curriculum for students. That increasingly means delivering and interacting with content

WHAT’S NEW IN THE BOX? Schoolbox is an all-in-one learning management system, portal and intranet that continues to evolve to help schools and students share, teach and learn online. So, what’s new in the box?

UPGRADES

INNOVATIONS

All devices Schoolbox is now available on all devices, with development over the last 12 months seeing the platform move from being laptop and desktop friendly to having all features and functions available on mobiles and tablets. This makes the system responsive to each device, suiting the likes of parents, who research has shown are high mobile users.

Personalisation Schoolbox is now available on all devices, with development over the last 12 months seeing the platform move from being laptop and desktop friendly to having all features and functions available on mobiles and tablets. This makes the system responsive to each device, suiting the likes of parents, who research has shown are high mobile users.

Rubrics Schoolbox has rebuilt its entire rubrics system, in an effort to establish best practice feedback on student assessments for both parents and teachers at schools. Rubrics demonstrate what students have achieved in assessments across a range of set criteria, and enhancing them for individuals and cohorts paints a powerful picture of where teaching and learning can be improved.

Whole child Schoolbox is continuing to expand the breadth of its reach in areas like pastoral care and sports, to ensure it captures more data that can be used to paint a holistic picture of how students are engaging with a school. Assisting with diagnosing issues within and outside the classroom, this fits well with schools that priortise the broader school experience rather than classroom results.

online, encouraging more collaboration, and pursuing a flipped classroom model in which students are able to make their own progress through the curriculum. “Having the technology and training to support those developments in learning is critical,” Richards says.

A big fish Schoolbox’s directors warn any procurement process takes time. In fact, the scope of the undertaking is often underestimated, which can affect the outcome of the project.

“Schools often don’t realise just how much something like this touches, how many people within the school community, and they need to be able to manage the process effectively,” Leckie says. “For example, a school may indicate they want a new system up and running in 12 weeks, without knowing how long a project might actually take. There are some unrealistic expectations placed on themselves, and their external suppliers, to support that.”

Another pitfall can come from not involving the right stakeholders early on. This can be a result of projects coming out of different departments, like an IT department with a budget to spend, a principal trying to make a difference to teaching and learning outcomes, or even a marketing department looking for better communications with stakeholders.

“Often they don’t engage all of the appropriate stakeholders at the beginning of the journey,” Richards says.

Given the pitfalls and confusion, Richards says engaging an Australian company like Alaress means schools gain the ‘big fish’ treatment it can provide. “We are primarily interested in local customers. It’s better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond.”

Schoolbox – Technology to transform K-12 schools. Everything in one place. Contact us today: 1300 932 338 | info@schoolbox.com.au; schoolbox.com.au

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FEATURES

TECHNOLOGY REPORT

CREATING EDUCATIONAL CONNECTION The space between a student question and the information that can answer it is closing fast, thanks to the power of a network creating educational connectivity NICK CROSS used to work in the education sector as a school director of learning technologies, but as education outreach manager at network provider AARNet, he’s seen the game of school internet connection change – and schools know it.

“It’s no longer all about just having that piece of string connecting your school to the outside world. Increasingly, the capabilities and resources schools use are all in the outside world, whether that’s student resources, school administration systems, or even where they store stuff. When everybody needs to be able to get to everything from wherever they are, it creates a whole set of challenges,” Cross says.

Widely regarded as the founder of the internet in Australia, AARNet works with 850 K-12 schools to deliver a unique set of ICT capabilities in line with its education mission. Nationally, AARNet interconnects universities, the CSIRO, and other organisations like hospitals, vocational training providers and museums, all of whom have a research and education mission or interact with the education sector.

For schools, this primarily means getting access to a powerful, custom-built IT infra­ structure, in the form of fibre optic links across the country and major metropolitan cities.

But as Cross sees it, it’s more than that – it’s about reducing the space between a student idea or question and the information needed to answer it.

“It goes from one end of the spectrum – the enquiring mind with a question in the classroom, or on the school oval, accessing the internet from a phone or a tablet, to the other

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“When everybody needs to be able to get to everything from wherever they are, it creates a whole set of challenges” end – how do they get to the range of answers they need?” he says.

Building a custom access layer in its network – or the ‘plumbing’ – AARNet then works with schools to advise on other infrastructure requirements, like wireless access points and the local network, and works with the network’s content providers, institutions and cultural organisations to bring them closer to students.

With the vast amount of data set to be used

in schools of the future, Cross says more schools will need specialist IT infrastructure to deliver that. “Schools build centres for maths, or music, specialist facilities that accommodate the learning outcomes they are looking for. It’s the same at the network level. Regular networks are like a tin shed – they’re big, there’s a concrete floor, you can use it for whatever you want – but it doesn’t have the same impact as a concert room on a group of music students.”

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ALL DEVICES IN THEIR PLACE Having the right devices is one thing, but where do you put them? Every device needs to be stored, charged, transported and secured THE EXPLOSION of digital devices in schools is doing wonders for student learning, but it is also creating a range of associated – and unanticipated – problems for schools.

PC Locs head of marketing Vlad Vasilciuc says just one of these is security, with the need to protect all of those new devices from the risk of theft and damage. “Back in the day when I went to school, we had a dedicated, locked computer room. Now, it’s more common to have a leasing arrangement from the school library.”

Founded by teacher Paul Simons, PC Locs aims to solve the storage, charging, security and transport challenges that schools often forget to address when purchasing devices.

The company started out with a product that secured desktop computers, but Simons has since expanded its range to include carts, charging stations and wall cabinets.

PC Locs’ carts are designed to house and transport specific types of devices, like laptops and tablets, or specific brands purchased, like iPads and Chromebooks. The majority of carts also come with baskets, a feature popular among teachers.

Vasilciuc says the carts help with common issues, like transportation. Depending on where the classroom is, moving a batch of devices from a library while navigating stairs and distances can be a risk for devices, staff and students, particularly if they are being juggled by hand or under arms. Baskets also offer transport versatility.

“Both teachers and students can help in retrieving devices using the basket, and it’s a lot faster and safer than pushing a cart around or carrying devices one by one, or five

Moving a batch of devices from a library while navigating stairs and distances can be a risk for devices, staff and students items at a time in your hands; it’s just not as easy to drop,” Vasilciuc says.

Time is another logistical problem. PC Locs produces in-classroom charging stations to cut down on transportation time, which can be mounted as wall units or desk units.

“There is a lot of time wasted before and after class getting and returning devices from

where they are stored to the classroom,” Vasilciuc says. “Teaching time is reduced a lot, and a 50-minute class could end up becoming a 40-minute class.”

PC Locs has also moved to meet the needs of schools with BYOD programs by creating charging lockers that keep individual and varied student devices secure.

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FEATURES

TECHNOLOGY REPORT

A CLEARER PICTURE Learning in the classroom is moving from old projector whiteboards to digital touch panels, as students demand the clarity of experience they get at home IT WASN’T so long ago that teachers favoured blackboards and chalk as teaching aides. But in this fast-paced, technologydriven world, that seems a lifetime ago.

While interactive whiteboards with projectors have been used by schools in recent years, A Brighter Image’s Simon Webber says this technology is now out of date.

“They are mostly obsolete now, as they’ve really been overtaken by touch panels,” he explains.

“With touch panels, you really have those two devices in one, rather than having to have a separately mounted projector in the classroom.”

In a time when students have become used to the clarity and sharpness of images on their iPads or LCD TV screens, projected images no longer seem quite as sharp, and students can more easily make sense of the ‘big tablet’ in the classroom.

Projectors have also had inherent problems with stabilisation and image shadowing. “It’s just not as crisp or clear an image as you have on a touchscreen. On the touchscreen, the image is of course generated by the device itself,” Webber says.

The next generation of touchscreens have specification advantages. For example, they have more inbuilt connectivity, with multiple HDMI and VGA inputs, and require less maintenance than projectors, which need lamps changed every 3,000 hours.

Webber says schools also appreciate that touchscreens can be used with mobile or motorised stands in the classroom, or fixed in place on walls at different heights; and that they can be used, much like a tablet, more creatively for interactive activities.

“They are just more engaging for students.

It’s more exciting for them, and there is more

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In a time when students have become used to the clarity and sharpness of images on their iPads or LCD TV screens, projected images no longer seem quite as sharp, and students can more easily make sense of the ‘big tablet’ in the classroom flexibility in the classroom for the teacher,” Webber says.

A Brighter Image still sells whiteboard projector technology, but Webber says the company is encouraging touchscreens and gradually schools are upgrading.

“A lot of schools still have projectors, but it is legacy technology. Schools can be hesitant

to change, given there is also a cash outlay when they upgrade, but it is going to happen eventually. It’s just a matter of when their budget allows,” Webber says.

“It’s not the end of the world, but projectors are not quite as user-friendly and the images probably aren’t as crisp and clear as they could be,” he adds.

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BYOD TO LAST BYOD is putting the power of technology into students’ hands, but expensive devices – and school budgets – are at risk of damage from day-to-day use WHEN MAZENOD College introduced a parent-funded 1:1 laptop program back in 2010, the school went down the path of choosing a school-nominated device, putting 14-inch-screen HP laptops with a weight of 2.2kg in the hands of students.

However, they were left with a challenge.

Given the weight of the devices, how would students carry them, and how would they reduce the risk of wear and tear? It’s a common problem that joins a long list for schools pursuing 1:1 programs.

“While ‘BYOD’ and ‘Choose Your Own Device’ models can be highly beneficial to students, staff and parents, there are many considerations that must be taken into account to ensure a smooth transition across the board,” Targus general manager Jay Turner says. “Attention to details like how to protect laptops, tablets and mobile devices, and ensuring a defined usage policy is in place before implementation are as important as network compatibility and updating IT infrastructure,” he says.

Just like Mazenod College, one of the important decisions schools and parents need to consider when embarking on a BYOD program is how to protect devices from the everyday knocks of school and home life.

Turner says this has a direct impact on school expenditure on replacement devices and repair costs. “It also prevents insurance premiums from rising, and means children will not fall behind with their work because they do not have a fully functional device,” he says.

The answer for Mazenod turned out to be Targus bags. The school had elected to maintain its IT support in-house, and wanted to keep costs down by providing support and repairs itself, as well as by reducing the amount of repairs. As a target, Mazenod College was

Given the weight of the devices, how would students carry them, and how would they reduce the risk of wear and tear? managing its program so repair costs would not rise beyond $150 per laptop, to maintain its low premium with the insurers.

Targus collaborated with Mazenod’s IT team to provide its patented T.A.N.C. design bags, which the company continues to improve year-on-year. The strong, fit-forpurpose bags have reduced the amount of

repairs needed to student laptops, and the college recently deployed an updated T.A.N.C. design for all students in November last year.

Mazenod’s IT manager, Hugo Van Niekerk, notes that cost was one of the factors in the decision. “It’s an economical solution that allows you to be agile and adapt to the challenges that the student day will throw at you,” he says.

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FEATURES

HEALTH & WELLBEING

IT’S TIME FOR A NATIONAL CONVERSATION Schools and communities look up to principals as inspiring leaders crucial to the future of our children – so why are they being treated so poorly?

Brett Henebery investigates

THE 2015 Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey report, released in December, found an alarming spike in cases of burnout, stress and violence experienced by principals. Compared to the previous survey, burnout, stress and instances of violence were all reported to be on the rise.

As a result, there are now calls for a national conversation to address the root causes of these issues.

But at what stage is this national conversation now? According to the report’s lead author, Australian Catholic University associate professor Philip Riley, it’s just getting started.

“I am hopeful that this is beginning. I have briefed nearly every Department of Education in the country and had a good audience. So we will see what eventuates this year,” Riley tells The Educator.

He adds that while it’s too early to tell what actions or interventions the report will eventually result in, its findings have prompted some states to take action in improving the health and wellbeing of principals.

“Western Australia and Queensland have just begun – or are about to begin – wellbeing programs and leadership development programs. Victoria is funding regional support personnel. So things are happening,” he says.

But surely the figures on burnout, abuse

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and stress cannot keep rising without a ‘straw that breaks the camel’s back’ moment in the future? How does Riley see the future of the profession being shaped by these issues if no major action is taken to resolve them?

“That is already clear. Assistant principals and other aspirants are simply not applying for the role. The decline in real application rates is somewhere between 60% and 85%, according to the Principals Australia Institute,” he says.

Not all doom and gloom However, while there is an overall rise in health-related issues that come with the job, some statistics reveal it’s not all doom and gloom. While violence and bullying are getting worse, the job satisfaction of principals in general is improving. Even more interestingly, principals experience actual violence at eight times the rate of the general population, yet on average they are happier in their jobs than the general population.

While this may be perplexing to some, the report found reasons to believe that some areas of principals’ jobs are improving over time. For example, since 2011 there has been a decrease (from 55% to 39%) in principals working more than 25 hours per week during school holiday periods.

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That’s an encouraging statistic, but looking at the big picture it is clear that the issues weighing on principals daily supersede this one factor, however positive it might be.

Actions taken

PRINCIPAL HEALTH SNAPSHOT

Burnout is 1.6 times higher for principals than for the average population

Stress is 1.7 times higher for principals than for the average population

Job satisfaction among principals has risen steadily since 2011 and is now 1.1 times higher for principals than for the average population

Self-efficacy among principals has risen steadily since 2011 and is now 1.1 times higher for principals than for the average population

Queensland Teachers’ Union (QTU) president Kevin Bates shared some of the initiatives his state is taking to ensure its principals are given the support they need.

“Queensland’s education department maintains collegiality when other states have moved to more competitive models of school management. This includes ongoing high levels of union membership and dedicated support structures for principals within the QTU,” Bates says.

He adds that Queensland’s education department maintains solid support structures for schools and principals while preserving job security for principals and other school leaders.

And it seems to be paying off.

In terms of bullying, threats of violence and physical violence against principals, the 2015 Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey report shows Queensland as having the lowest prevalence percentage by year.

It appears that factors such as department support and job security naturally contribute to principals’ wellbeing and job satisfaction.

So, how are other states faring in this department?

While the national trend pointed to tougher times for principals, those in Tasmania were shown to be the ones hit the hardest by rising levels of burnout and stress.

Terry Polglase, Tasmanian branch president of the Australian Education Union, told the ABC in December that support for principals had taken a hit due to budget cuts, leaving them with less time and resources to deal with complex issues.

“The budget cuts that occurred last year took two teachers out of our schools and put principals in classrooms. This means them having less time to deal with issues, meet with parents and so on. People get angry,” he said.

“Certainly for Tasmania we need to look at the effects of what we are actually doing within our policies.”

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FEATURES

HEALTH & WELLBEING WHERE TO NEXT? The 2015 Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey report made several key recommendations: Government Adopt a whole-of-government approach to education budgets and stop looking for short-term quick fixes.

Employers Reduce job demands or increase resources to cope with growing workloads, and work towards building trust in the system as a whole and between those who work in it.

Professional associations, education bodies and unions Collaborate across the education community to inform and give ‘on the ground’ direction to education policy.

Community Support local schools and stop the offensive behaviour.

Schools Increase trust and collaboration between staff members and across schools. This can be learnt by observing school networks that have made progress in this space.

Educators Respectfully speak back when faced with moral harassment, and take responsibility for personal work-life balance.

Research community Provide better longitudinal evidence of the differential impact of all the influences on education in order to provide better insight into the most effective policies, processes and procedures in Australia’s differing contexts.

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In places like NSW and Victoria, these problems are less pronounced but things are still far from satisfactory. The worrying statistics are no surprise to Lila Mularczyk and her colleagues within the NSW Secondary Principals Association.

Mularczyk puts the decline in principal health and wellbeing down to a changing society, which she says is reflected in the report’s findings.

“The data is emphasising that society is changing and the treatment of professionals in schools is changing. There is no longer a platform of respect that there was previously,” she tells The Educator.

sector doesn’t have this problem, but it does,” Riley says.

“Given that this work involves legal compliance, principals are running around trying to make sure they’re getting it done so they’re not putting themselves and their schools at risk. The problem is that there is a massive amount of work involved in this.”

Adding to the burden?

When Riley travelled around the country and talked to principals about these issues, he found that many schools were implementing wellbeing programs that did nothing more than add to principals’ workloads.

“Assistant principals and other aspirants are simply not applying for the [principal] role. The decline in real application rates is somewhere between 60% and 85%, according to the Principals Australia Institute” Philip Riley On the front line In Victoria, Roger Herbert, who heads Geelong Grammar’s exclusive Timbertop campus, says he has experienced a significant increase in workload over the last five years, particularly when it comes to completing compliance requirements.

“This is my tenth year here at Timbertop, so that’s a long period of time in this institution. I think that in the last four or five years there has been quite a significant increase in workload,” he says.

“You take one [compliancy requirement form] in isolation and it doesn’t look like much, but when you put it all together it constitutes a considerable amount of additional work. The problem is there isn’t extra time to deal with these things.”

Being time-poor is a big part of the problem, Riley agrees.

“Most of the work principals are getting caught up with is administrative compliance work … things that have nothing to do with teaching and learning. This is across all sectors. People often think the independent

“Wellbeing is a good measure of the success or otherwise of educational policy. It’s not a thing that needs to be tackled by itself,” Riley explains.

“We need to get the thinking around that changed so we get better policies and better distributions of workloads. This way, bureaucrats and business managers can do more of that work that needs to be done, allowing principals to get on with the work they should be doing.”

Herbert says principals who are daunted by accumulating administrative tasks are often tempted to spend more time in the office than in classrooms or schoolyards engaging with students. However, it’s the students that come first for Herbert, who says “a principal always needs to be out and about” in order to make a real difference.

“We need to talk to students and develop relationships, because that’s what makes the world work. In other words, the more time principals spend in our office, the less time they have to be out and about helping students in their journey through life,” he says.

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the educ

The business of education The Educator is Australia’s only magazine for the most senior educational professionals and decision makers.

The Educator works with some of the world’s most highprofile business schools and speaks to leading education executives from around the globe to publish content that supports both the businesses and best-practice functional requirements placed on the executives that run them.

Every issue of The Educator contains aspirational cover stories and high-level case studies providing a global and national perspective on education leadership and management best practice, as well as interviews with the finest minds in education.

SUBSCRIBE FOR 12 MONTHS (4 ISSUES) FOR ONLY $29.95 VISIT WWW.EDUCATORONLINE.COM.AU TO SUBSCRIBE TODAY the educator Subs v2.indd 1 38-41_Health and Ad wellbeing_SUBBED.indd 41

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FEATURES

EDUCATION INNOVATORS

THE WORLD’S MOST INNOVATIVE SCHOOLS The Educator explores some of the most innovative schools from around the world to see how they are preparing students for the world of tomorrow IN ONE way or another, all schools are places of creativity and innovation. However, some go above and beyond to make their students’ learning experience something very unique.

While Issue 1.2 of The Educator highlighted 30 local schools that have hit the mark in terms of innovation, here we take a look at what the best of the best from around the world are doing.

Being faced with a rapidly changing technology and learning environment is perhaps the biggest challenge for teachers and students alike. The trick lies in adapting to these challenges – or in the case of these schools, driving that change yourself.

These innovative schools have found ways to not just adapt to change but to shake things up when it comes to how they prepare their students for the wider world.

Sra Pou Vocational School, Cambodia: The school for building community When the residents of Sra Pou village in Cambodia were evicted from their homes in the city to the surrounding countryside, they found themselves without basic infrastructure and secure incomes.

However, in 2010, following an initiative involving a local NGO – Blue Tent – and architects Rudanko + Kankkunen, the community developed a vocational school that was built using local materials and a local workforce.

No machines or prefabricated parts were used in the building of the school, which was entirely hand-made. This also allowed the employment of a large number of people

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Sra-Pou-Vocational-School, Cambodia

within the community who each used simple and transferable skills.

Sra Pou Vocational School is now known as the school for building community, and building community is something Sra Pou does quite literally. The all-ages school provides professional training and helps local residents start sustainable businesses together.

Members of the community are taught how to value and price their homemade goods so they can sell them to people in their area.

When classes are not operating, the facility is also a place of public gathering and democratic decision-making for the whole community.

The Fontan College, Bogotá, Colombia: A self-directed curriculum For any gifted student who feels they’re being held back from fulfilling their potential, the following school in Colombia is just the place.

Fontan College allows its students what it

The Fontan College, Columbia

calls ‘customised studies’ – the freedom to decide what they want to learn and when they want to learn it. Fontan College embraces a relational education system, which seeks the development of student potential by respecting differences and using autonomy and excellence as characteristics of the learning process, rather than a goal in itself.

While each student works at their own pace, they also work closely with a tutor who helps them achieve their learning outcomes. As well as helping students navigate any academic areas, the tutors also help students with their personal, social and emotional development, guiding them through the issues that have the potential to obstruct their learning.

The school’s ICT infrastructure has been set up to give students the best possible access to any information they might need.

Information such as study plans, calendars, evaluation dates and educational content is all stored in a virtual platform students can access any time of the day.

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Ørestad Gymnasium, Denmark

P-TECH High School, US

up of two schools, Egalia and Nicolaigården, both of which reject gender-based pronouns in the hopes of grooming kids to think of one another on equal terms.

Careful not to exclude any groups within its communities, most of the children’s books include homosexual couples, single parents or adopted children.

To help avoid gender bias, the school’s 33 students are encouraged to avoid using the words ‘he’ and ‘she’ when referring to each other. Instead, children are encouraged to call one another by their first names, or use ‘they’.

Egalia Pre-school, Sweden

Fontan College also caters for students who are academically ahead of their peers and anxious to get into the real world. Depending on students’ distribution of time and discipline, they can graduate in less time than they would in a traditional school.

Ørestad Gymnasium, Copenhagen, Denmark: The school in a cube The trend towards open collaborative learning spaces is clear, but this Danish school takes the concept to a new level.

The Ørestad Gymnasium was created to nourish its pedagogy – aiming to provide its students with “a flexible and structured use” of different learning environments. The school’s building was designed as an open space where all activities are visible to students and staff in order to improve communication and provide inspiration.

Despite its name, Ørestad Gymnasium takes the form of a giant cube in which the

school’s 358 students, aged 16–19, sit and learn together. According to its website, the project was based on “a visionary interpretation of openness and flexibility” regarding class sizes and assemblies.

While the school’s curriculum includes regular classes, it also recognises the demands of the 21st century workforce, offering classes in media, communications, and globalisation studies for students.

In 2012, Germany’s edition of the Financial Times rated the school as one of the most modern in Europe.

Egalia Pre-school, Stockholm, Sweden: The school without gender Move over Respectful Relationships classes.

This Swedish school takes the cake when it comes to teaching students about tolerance and equality.

Egalia Pre-school is founded on total equality among students. The system is made

P-TECH High School, New York, US: Bridging high school and college Launched in 2011 by tech giant IBM, P-TECH (Pathways in Technology) High School was created as a way to bridge the gap between school and college for New York’s teenagers.

Attending P-TECH means that the usual fouryear track to college is shortened to just two.

“P-TECH is transforming high school,” IBM’s Stanley Litow, key architect of the P-TECH model, told Tech Insider.

“This offers students ‘a clear pathway from school to career, giving young people options that they could not imagine, and directly advancing the nation’s economy.”

In April, former prime minister Tony Abbott, after completing a tour of this campus, announced that corporate-sponsored vocational schools would soon be a reality here in Australia. Schools reflecting the Australian version of P-TECH schools are expected to open in the Victorian towns of Ballarat and Geelong this year.

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FEATURE / BROKER EDUCATION SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT

AURORA COLLEGE

A VIRTUAL REALITY Aurora College is making cutting-edge learning real for students in rural and remote NSW, thanks to a pioneering embrace of all things virtual, writes Ben Abbott

RECESS AT schools across Australia usually provides students with a chance to meet friends and teachers and enjoy a break in a welcoming, communal playground.

That’s the same at Aurora College – except for something very, very different.

Starting this year, students at Aurora will be able to catch up with their peers at recess, but virtually, utilising a pioneering 3D virtual learning environment – dubbed iSee – that the school has developed together with the University of Wollongong.

Equipped with headsets and a computer, students will also be able to make use of the 3D virtual environment’s very own lecture theatre and school hall. Parents aren’t excluded: they’ll be logging on themselves for this year’s parent-teacher interviews.

“It’s world-leading technology developed here in Australia, and really sets our school apart from any other in the world in terms of what we are using in the virtual learning environment,” Aurora College principal Chris Robertson tells The Educator.

There’s a good reason why Aurora has embraced the latest in virtual technology. A new selective school designed for rural and remote NSW students, Aurora is the very first virtual school in Australia to provide real-time, online schooling for gifted students who remain based in their home schools in all corners of the state.

“Our students come from 40 partner schools across the state, from as far north as

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Chris Robertson (principal) pictured in front of a screen showing Aurora’s 3D virtual playground

Conor McMullen (Year 8, Cobar High School) viewing a masterclass by Dr Steven Goldfarb at the European Centre for Nuclear Research, Switzerland

“Our students come from 40 partner schools across the state, from as far north as Kyogle, as far south as Eden and as far west as Broken Hill” Chris Robertson Kyogle, as far south as Eden and as far west as Broken Hill,” Robertson says.

And with 180 students enrolled in 2016, up from 130 during its first year of operation last year, it’s clear the state’s fledgling virtual school is off to a very real start.

A call to arms Aurora was born out of the gap in educational outcomes between students in metro areas and those in rural and remote areas. In 2013, the NSW Government released Rural and Remote Education – A Blueprint for Action

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detailing the problem, which Robertson says was a “call to arms” because it showed this achievement gap was widening over time.

“The blueprint contained research and a number of findings about teaching and learning in rural and remote schools, and painted a picture in some areas of an alarming inequity between the opportunities for kids in metropolitan schools compared with their peers in rural and remote schools,” he says.

There were four key areas of suggested reform. One of these – to give students in rural and remote schools access to a broad range of curriculum opportunities, particularly gifted and talented students – resulted in the creation of Aurora.

REFORMING RURAL AND REMOTE EDUCATION IN NSW Students from rural and remote areas underperform in the International Student Assessment reading test in almost every OECD country around the world.

However, the gap is larger in Australia than the average of other OECD countries, and NSW is one of the worst states when compared to the rest of Australia.

NSW’s ‘rural and remote education blueprint’, released in 2013, recommended the situation be improved in the following areas, to ensure better future outcomes: The provision of stronger early childhood education in rural and remote communities The availability of a broader range of curriculum opportunities for rural and remote schools, particularly for gifted and talented students The creation of new incentives to attract and retain quality teachers and school leaders to rural and remote schools The establishment of 15 specialist centres offering inter-agency health and wellbeing services to support schools in meeting local student needs Source: NSW Government – Rural and Remote Education: A Blueprint for Action, 2013

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FEATURE / BROKER EDUCATION SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT

AURORA COLLEGE school model, not just in the state or nationally but internationally.

Making the virtual real

Deputy Premier Troy Grant, Education Minister Adrian Piccoli and Aurora principal Chris Robertson, with Dubbo College South Campus students at the launch of Aurora College in February 2015

The model creates a sense of connection and collaboration between students and teachers that other virtual models have struggled to achieve Robertson joined the school in 2014 to work with the Director of Secondary Education to plan, implement and operationalise Aurora College for a start in February 2015.

“We looked at models that existed across the globe, and took the very best elements of those, fitted to our context, and came up with something quite unique. It’s really quite different from any other school anywhere else in the world.”

The school’s Year 7 to 10 students come through NSW’s selective school tests, while in Years 11 and 12 the school essentially takes all students, who very often are unable to source the subjects they are interested in at their home schools.

The end goal is for Aurora to establish and lead best practice pedagogy in the virtual

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Aurora’s biggest achievement to date has been its delivery of synchronous lessons online, with students participating in lessons at the same time across the state.

“Virtual schools that operate around the world are really only structured for passive delivery of content. The difference at Aurora is that kids log on to a virtual learning environment, connect with teachers and classmates on screen, and take part in a lesson which involves the use of various communication and collaboration tools.”

Robertson says the model creates a sense of connection and collaboration between students and teachers that other virtual models have struggled to achieve.

The school’s strategy goes beyond just delivery. Aurora is also breaking new ground in partnering with leading real-world businesses, universities, and scientific and cultural institutions, to bring global experts into remote and regional classrooms.

Initiatives include a now well-established masterclass program, which has already provided Aurora students with a range of interactive lessons involving the CSIRO, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, Macquarie University, the State Library of NSW, and even celebrated young adult fiction author Fiona Wood.

The school also has an associated mentor program, which aims to link students with professionals who have a high level of expertise in a student’s area of interest. “For example, if there is a student in Broken Hill with an interest in astrophysics, we will plan to set up a series of sessions with a mentor in the field who can provide insights into their professional life and give that student advice on possible career paths.”

The school combines its virtual model with residential schools twice a year – in Sydney and Canberra this year. While a logistical challenge given the school’s geographic spread, it provides a chance for students to meet and work with peers and

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teachers, and includes a busy program of lessons, tutorials and excursions.

“Last year, we had a masterclass from Microsoft on coding at UTS, and a robotics masterclass at the Powerhouse Museum,” Robertson says. “There are lots of team-

The backbone of its delivery platform is its web conferencing software, which Aurora combines with ‘robust, proven’ systems like LMS Moodle, and other collaboration platforms like Office 365 and Google Apps.

To ensure students have resources to hand,

All lessons are recorded and stored in an LMS, to overcome one-off situations in which a student is unable to attend a lesson, perhaps because of a home school function building exercises and the like, and lots of fun as well. We like to give the kids the opportunity to experience things they normally wouldn’t,” he says.

Closing the distance Aurora is conquering distance through technology, but there are challenges. Though it publishes a timetable matrix well in advance of the school year, it still needs to work with home schools that need to build parts of their timetables from Aurora’s.

“Given the broad range of bell times across the state there is some flexibility required on both the part of Aurora and the home school to delivery the curriculum.”

All lessons are recorded and stored in an LMS, to overcome one-off situations in which a student is unable to attend a lesson, perhaps because of a home school function. Students also have Personal Learning Plans identifying goals and obstacles so they can manage the intricate details of timetabling, special needs, and regular absences.

Technology itself has been less of a problem than might be expected at a virtual school. “The issue for some students occurs when they go home and have difficulty accessing the internet, in areas of the state where access is a problem,” Robertson says.

“However, by and large, most of the connection is done at school, and then resources are downloaded at school and taken home,” he says.

the school also has one of the state’s first fully virtual school libraries.

Connecting locally, learning globally Aurora College is already proactively sharing its experiences with other educators in the state, as part of a commitment to give back to the wider departmental community.

“We are hosting a two-day rural and remote conference for our colleagues in May, and the idea there is to share the benefits of our experiences and to hear from other educators who are doing amazing things in this space,” Robertson says.

A big challenge this year will be making sure more parents know about Aurora. “Not all parts of the state are completely aware of us yet. We need to make sure, for example, that parents of kids in Year 5 in rural and remote communities know about us, and apply to attend our school as a selective school entrant in Year 7.”

If it can do that, Aurora will be much closer to fulfilling one of its primary goals: keeping kids in their local communities while expanding their learning globally.

“We say one of the key reasons for the creation of Aurora College was to keep families together. No longer do the parents of gifted and talented kids face the agonising decision of sending their child to a selective school in Sydney; they have the option of accessing a specialty program for gifted and talented kids at home.”

DEVELOPING VIRTUAL TEACHERS Professional learning has a special emphasis at Aurora College, where Chris Robertson puts development high on the agenda for his high-quality staff.

“We were able to hand-select all of our teaching staff on the basis of their curriculum expertise, their capacity to deliver innovative and engaging lessons in an online environment, and their commitment to their own professional development,” he says.

“In a school of this nature – where we use so much in the way of new and unfamiliar technology – professional learning is an important part of what we do.”

Aurora conducts regular professional learning sessions for teachers in a virtual learning environment after school, and teachers also attend courses together, such as the GERRIC Mini Certificate of Gifted Education at the University of NSW. In the end, the aim is to foster good pedagogy first, with technology as a tool..

“What interests us as a faculty is how we can use these tools in the classroom and effectively integrate them in such a way that it fosters a sense of collaboration and engagement in our students,” Robertson says.

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FEATURES

PEOPLE MANAGEMENT

THE SKY IS THE LIMIT We all know about unconscious bias, but how about the Pygmalion Effect? Or the Golem Effect?

Corrinne Armour outlines how self-imposed mental limits inhibit optimal workplace performance

SELF-IMPOSED mental limits can kill careers. Mental limits affect motivation and personal performance, and don’t allow for leadership based on openness and curiosity.

They limit the potential seen, and therefore nurtured, in others. They limit the capacity of teams to achieve optimal performance.

As a leader, changing your mind is the key to changing results.

You see with your beliefs, not your eyes Beliefs create conditions in which people live. While beliefs can support the seemingly impossible heights of great achievers, they can equally sabotage the simplest of goals.

Beliefs colour how you see the world and how you live in it – they create your selfimposed mental limits.

When a leader laments that it’s hard to get good people, or this team’s not capable of getting the results we need, or I’ll never be good at that, do they realise their impact on the situation? Without examining your beliefs and understanding how they may be creating self-imposed mental limits, you are at risk of buying into a false picture of potential – for yourself, your teams, and your organisation.

Three ways self-imposed mental limits inhibit performance

1

What you get is what you expect

The Pygmalion Effect1 is a psychological principle that describes people’s propensity to live up to high expectations placed upon them. When translated to leadership, this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy in those you lead. When you expect someone to rise to the challenge, and you support them to do so, they will perform.

The Golem Effect produces the same but opposite effect: people perform poorly when expected to. For example, if a leader expects an employee to fail, that will likely be the outcome.

The upshot for you? You get what you expect when it comes to developing performance in others. What you hold possible sets the frame into which others can grow, and your self-imposed mental limits can serve to lift or reduce their performance.

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2

A fixed mindset limits growth

Adopting a fixed mindset 2 limits achieving optimal performance.

• Fixed mindset – The belief that skills, talents, and capabilities are predetermined and finite. They cannot be developed – there is talent or there isn’t.

• Growth mindset – The belief that talents and abilities can be developed – there is potential to foster new skills.

Leaders who adopt a growth mindset believe they (and others) can, and will, improve with learning and experience. They see failure as an opportunity to grow and learn, and are willing to take risks and push boundaries.

Leaders with a fixed mindset experience an urgency to prove themselves. Success depends upon protecting their fixed qualities and concealing their deficiencies, therefore, they avoid situations where failure is likely, or even possible. When failure occurs, the focus is on rationalising the failure rather than learning from it.

Leadership with self- imposed mental limits Golem/ Pygmalion Effect

Daniel has no people skills, and if watched closely, he will provide enough evidence to exit him on grounds of poor performance.

Daniel will rise to the role with support and coaching.

Fixed/growth mindset

Daniel doesn't have people skills and there’s nothing to be done about it. There is no one with the skills to teach him. He must be moved.

With opportunity and actionable feedback, Daniel will develop the ability to relate well to people. Even small incremental improvements will result in the gradual development of a good skill base. This is also an opportunity to heighten your leadership skills by working with him on this challenge.

The DunningKruger Effect

As a skilled leader who can judge people on performance, it is clear Daniel lacks capability in his role.

Daniel may not realise the extent to which he is overestimating his ability to connect with others.

This can be communicated to him.

Ingroup bias

Having come from a great team, it would be better to persuade one of them to come here. They could learn quickly and would do a good job.

While it would be easy to bring in someone from a previous team, the ingroup can be expanded to include Daniel.

Confirmation bias

Daniel isn’t good with people. He ruffles customers’ feathers. He never gets it right.

The tendency to ‘see’ Daniel’s weak points will be replaced with focusing on what he does well.

The Golem Effect means people perform poorly when expected to. For example, if a leader expects an employee to fail, that will likely be the outcome 3

Unconscious bias

Unconscious biases are the stereotypes that shape your thinking. You are faced with billions of pieces of information at any time, and you use stereotypes – both conscious and unconscious – to make generalisations so you don’t have to analyse all that data from scratch.

Here are just three unconscious biases that could be limiting potential in yourself and those you lead.

• Confirmation bias is selective thinking and filtering, which results in favouring information that confirms your preconceived ideas and supports your hypothesis.

• Ingroup bias is the tendency to give preferential treatment to others perceived to be members of ‘your group’ (people most similar and/or well known to you).

Leadership with openness and curiosity

• The Dunning-Kruger Effect is the tendency for people with low skills to overestimate their ability in social and intellectual settings, while experts will underestimate their abilities.

Meanwhile, back in the workplace You are frustrated with Daniel, who you ‘inherited’ six weeks ago when you took on this new role. Daniel has been leading a customer-facing team for eight months yet he doesn’t warm to customers – or anyone. You suggested he work on his interpersonal skills and you recommended a training course, but there has been no visible change.

Contrast two ways your thinking could impact Daniel’s performance and your success as a leader (see boxout above).

While this may sound like an artificial

comparison, I often see examples of one or more of these self-imposed beliefs playing out in this way. It’s a shortcut to reducing your performance and the performance of those around you.

Expand your mental limits to expand performance What can you do to encourage optimal performance at work?

1. Expect and encourage the best to leverage the Pygmalion Effect. Be clear on judgments, expectations and beliefs you hold about yourself and your people.

2. Adopt a growth mindset to fast-track your growth and potential, and to develop those around you.

3. Develop an awareness of unconscious bias and how this impacts your decisionmaking and your ability to unleash your own potential and the potential of others.

Corrinne Armour is a leadership speaker, trainer and co-author of Developing Direct Reports: Taking the guesswork out of leading leaders. Contact her at corrinne@corrinnearmour.com.

Source: 1R Rosenthal & L Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom, 1968, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

2 Carol S Dweck PhD, Mindset; The New Psychology of Success, 2006, The Random House Publishing Group.

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FEATURES

PRINCIPAL SAFETY

PRINCIPAL SAFETY: NAVIGATING CONFRONTATION With assault levels and bullying against principals on the rise, Brett Henebery investigates what can be done to minimise the risk of violent confrontation with angry students and parents THE 2015 Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety & Wellbeing Survey shows that bullying and intimidation against principals is on the rise. As a result, many school leaders are calling for action – in particular, a strong proactive response from government and society as a whole.

The report revealed that when it comes to bullying and threats of violence, parents are the worst offenders, making up 42% of reported bullying and 41% of threats towards principals.

Students, on the other hand, are the main culprits when it comes to actual violence against principals, with 77% of principals reporting cases of physical assault by students.

A growing problem To combat this, some key voices in educational leadership are calling for a national conversation to address what they call a “societal problem” that affects not only their own health and safety, but the future of the profession itself.

Australian Catholic University (ACU) associate professor, Philip Riley, says the report, now in its fifth year, shows a consistent escalation of offensive behaviour that can no longer be ignored.

“Many of the results are not only of serious concern for the profession as a whole, but also the wider community,” Riley says.

“As an example of the toll that issues like this can take, this year’s survey saw double the

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rate of ‘red flags’ compared with last year.”

These ‘red flags’ appear when a principal’s response to conflict show cause for concern and that intervention may be required.

Action required While the calls for broad community action to combat the issue of violence and bullying against principals has been widely supported by principals, others are calling for more immediate deterrents.

Ron Bamford, Australian Principals Federation (APF) national president, says that given the frequency of these attacks, all states

harming principals when they leave the school gates.”

And these incidents are “just the tip of the iceberg”, says WA Primary Principals’ Association (WAPPA) president Stephen Breen.

“One of the things that our association has been saying for a while is that we’re good at reacting to these incidents but we’re hopeless at proactivity in this area,” Breen says.

“To me, it’s like trying to get one school to solve a major problem of society; this cannot be solved by an education department. It’s a societal problem, and one that needs society to

“It’s like trying to get one school to solve a major problem of society; this cannot be solved by an education department” Stephen Breen should enforce mandatory jail terms for those who assault principals. This would mirror the convictions of those found guilty of assaulting other public officers, such as police. Western Australia introduced just such a controversial law in 2009, following the brutal bashing of a police officer.

“We have legislation that allows principals to prohibit parents from coming on to the school site,” Bamford tells The Educator.

“However, that doesn’t stop them from

stand up and say, ‘We’ve had enough of this’.”

The consequences are not only the physical and mental abuse itself, but also “the longterm viability of the profession”, he adds.

“The concern that I have as a professional educator is hearing talk by teachers and deputy principals who ask, ‘Why would I want to be a principal?’” Breen says.

“There is a smaller number of people who are putting their hands up to become a principal, and this is across all three school sectors.”

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Support from above

What can you do?

Breen says education departments need to trust principals and back them up in their disputes with angry parents, adding that while the integrity of principals is scrutinised on a regular basis, the department fails to support them when they are forced into situations outside their control.

“A principal’s job is to manage teaching and learning – not going into a fight with a parent we know will never listen,” Breen says.

“We need some authority to say, ‘We’ve listened and the principal is on the right track’.

We need a circuit-breaker at that level.”

In the absence of such a circuit-breaker, principals say parents should reflect on their attitudes and recognise that it may be having a negative impact on their children.

Australian Primary Principals Association president, Dennis Yarrington, says parents should question what they’re communicating to their children if they use violence to gain power and control.

“I would call on employers and jurisdictions to respond and provide a safe working environment for everyone, including principals.

Increasing protection is not the only answer. It is education and informing parents about how to address concerns.”

So how can school leaders mitigate against potential issues such as verbal threats and physical attacks?

NSW Secondary Principals Council (SPC) president, Lila Mularczyk, says principals are trained to follow a risk assessment process in the event of such incidents occurring.

“Schools and school leaders have quite explicit policy to follow if an incident occurs.

This includes contacting school security, safety procedures and contacting the police for support, remediation and/or follow-up,” Mularczyk says.

De-escalating training Bamford adds that principals were once given the same de-escalation training as police, and reintroducing this training – while being a preliminary measure – would be a step in the right direction.

“Some years ago, when principals encountered an angry individual, they would use what was called ‘verbal judo’ techniques [see box] in order to calm the person down to the point where they could have a normal conversation,” Bamford says.

“I think all principals should have that sort of training today.”

VERBAL JUDO While verbal judo will certainly not resolve this wide-ranging and deep-rooted issue, those who have been trained in its fundamentals report the following benefits: Principal safety Principals are taught to use words to prevent confrontations from becoming physically violent Enhanced professionalism Principals recognise the impact of their words on the public and use language appropriate to each encounter Reduced vicarious liability Principals who handle citizen encounters more skillfully are less likely to generate complaints and lawsuits, and will also be more articulate in describing their reasoning and actions.

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FEATURES

TEAMWORK

THE REINVENTION OF TEAMWORK Technology gives us the power to communicate, collaborate and learn across great divides – but, ultimately, it remains a tool. The real key to 21st century business success is teamwork, writes Graham Winter

DISRUPTION IS the buzzword of business.

And why wouldn’t it be when tech-centric companies such as Amazon, Uber, Netflix and Twitter are transforming the way we shop, travel, play and communicate?

Perhaps your business is trying to disrupt itself?

If not, then you can be sure that someone else’s is, and chances are they’re doing it with quite different teamwork practices to what you treat as the norm.

Is it technology that’s making the difference inside these disruptive companies?

Yes, to the extent that product technology supports their exponential growth. However, in-company everyone has the same access to much the same technology at the same time, everywhere. It’s cheap, easy to use and mobile.

And let’s remember that instant messaging, email, smartphones, video, collaboration software and the like are tools and tools only.

Where’s the difference?

Share and share alike There’s a clue in the common purpose of many of these new technologies: to facilitate the sharing of information.

Indeed, this is exactly why the net was invented in the first place. Social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, are popular because people like to share. We have social brains and our evolution has programmed us to connect

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(because it saved our early ancestors from the disruption of sabre-toothed tigers). Even Daniel Goleman, the acclaimed thought leader in emotional intelligence, now speaks of social intelligence.

We are genetically wired to engage and share with others and, in doing so, to adapt and respond and learn, which is precisely what the disruptive teams in places such as Uber and Dropbox are doing so brilliantly,

the distraction of ‘always being on’.

The better performers in this digital world derive their focus from the core belief that it’s not so much which collaborative technology they use to share information (the tools are very similar), but with whom and what they (collectively) do with it.

Fast disruptors know that technology can be duplicated, but there is one thing that can’t be. In a disruptive world the secret to success

Technology is the vehicle. It is who you take along for the ride and how you use the technology to share the challenges and opportunities that makes the real difference and they’re doing it with the help (and at times hindrance) of new technologies.

Here are six things you might do to lead your team to be the disrupters, or at least the nimble adaptors.

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remains what it was thousands of years ago: the ability of people to work together towards a shared purpose. In a word, teamwork – but a more fluid and flexible style that suits a world that has seen its boundaries shatter in the face of globalisation.

Find the secret

We live in an age of information overload, bombarded with data 24/7.

We are most certainly sharing and it’s on a global scale that’s faster, more frequent and, some would argue, less meaningful than ever before. The importance of focus can’t be underestimated as we must navigate through

2

Make the secret scalable

While technology and globalisation continue to disrupt the business landscape, they are not so much reinventing teamwork in their wake, but rather scaling it as a capability and culture.

The typical company circa 2015 has people

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turn, connect with them. They inspire people to think as one team, to move as one team and to learn as one team.

Think of a flock of migrating geese, which always fly in a V formation. Geese innately know the secret to great teamwork. They have a common destination and work in perfect unison. When a goose drops out of the V formation, it quickly discovers that it requires a great deal more effort and energy. Geese help each other too. When a goose gets sick or wounded, two geese drop out of the formation and follow their fellow member down to help provide protection. They stay with this member of the flock until he or she is either able to fly again or dies. Then they launch out on their own, creating another formation, or they catch up with their own flock.

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dispersed across multiple locations, and issues arising at the speed of light, which is why teamwork makes the business more than the sum of its parts. Great teamwork scaled across the business makes anything possible.

This is why a national 2014 employment survey in the US, as reported by Forbes, found that the skill employers looked for in their new recruits was the ability to work in a team structure. The next-most-important skill was the ability to communicate verbally with people inside and outside an organisation.

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Accelerate and share the learning

Business has always been a team sport and there are many good reasons for this, however, one now stands alone as pivotal to organisation survival and success.

Business is consumer driven (or more specifically, customer experience driven) which means that our teams must be agile, innovative and constantly learning how to optimise that experience for a customer who has abounding choice.

Shared learning is the key because working alone or in silos of expertise reduces

learning, growth and creativity. When there is no one to challenge us we simply don’t leverage our experience and ideas.

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Escape the gravity of hierarchy and structure

Daniel Pink, acclaimed business thought leader, argues that we are now in the Conceptual Age, in which right-brain thinking reigns supreme. There is much evidence for this. Pink talks of the necessity for organisational symphony, through empathy, intuition, play and meaning.

The disruptive companies are enterprises more than organisations, unencumbered by the gravity of organisational hierarchy, process and division.

They play like they’re in the Age of the Entrepreneur – those risk-ready, nimble, well-connected folk who thrive on change.

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Harness the power of the whole team

The leaders of the most successful disruptive companies share their vision and move others to see it too. They’re marvellous storytellers, connecting with others who, in

Share the truth

The disruptors share the reality. They are not afraid of the truth. In fact, what they fear most are hidden agendas, silos and the status quo. As in professional sport, they make sure the whole team knows whether they have won or lost and why. The focus is always on what is best for the business, even if getting to the marrow of this takes some tough conversations. The leaders insist that they be challenged. They embrace feedback and tap into the power of their people, because a good idea can come from anywhere.

Make the secret yours Technology gives us the power to communicate, collaborate and learn across great divides. Very few of us do this well. To prosper in today’s markets takes real teamwork, and we are just beginning to harness technology to this end.

Beware those who see technology as an end itself. Technology is the vehicle. It is who you take along for the ride and how you use the technology to share the challenges and opportunities that makes the real difference.

This is what it’s really all about.

Graham Winter is the best-selling author of Think One Team (Wiley $25.95) – thinkoneteam.com.

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PEOPLE

CAUGHT ON CAMERA MICROSOFT OPENS DOORS TO CODERS

Microsoft’s first overseas shopfront at Pitt St Mall, Sydney

Opening its first overseas storefront in Sydney’s Pitt Street Mall last November, Microsoft unveiled creative coding classes, which are being run from the store’s upstairs ‘community theatre space’. The area is dedicated to those who wish to attain – or sharpen – their digital literacy skills, particularly when it comes to learning code.

Mt Druitt Chifley College students at Microsoft’s launch of its first overseas shopfront at Pitt Street Mall, Sydney

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull discussing the National Innovation and Science Agenda with Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Christopher Pyne: 7 December, 2015

NEW EDUCATION MINISTER, NEW AGENDA In September, Australia had a change of government. While Malcolm Turnbull was sworn into office as our new Prime Minister, Senator Simon Birmingham was appointed the new Federal Education Minister. A cornerstone of the new Federal Government’s domestic policy has been to improve innovation and science in order to prepare our youth for the challenges of a 21st century workplace.

Prime Minister Turnbull announces his new-look cabinet, including new Federal Education Minister, Simon Birmingham: 20 September, 2015

Senator Simon Birmingham sworn in as the new Federal Education Minister: 21 September, 2015

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Students from Cardross Primary School, Pyper Dalla Santa, Anna Scase, Noah Allford and Caleb Graham, all 12, on White Ribbon Day march: 25 November, 2015 (Picture: Louise Donges, Sunraysia Daily)

SCHOOLS MARK WHITE RIBBON DAY

Parkes, NSW locals supporting a campaign against domestic violence: 27 November (Parkes Champion Post) Whyalla High School, SA, marks White Ribbon Day, which fell on 25 November, 2015. The day commemorates victims of domestic violence.

On 25 November, schools around the nation marked White Ribbon Day, an initiative aimed at raising awareness around domestic violence. Prominent voices, such as the National Children’s Commissioner, the Australian of the Year and the Domestic Violence NSW CEO, have pushed for anti-domestic violence classes to be rolled out in schools nationally.

Students at the World Education Games prize ceremony, Sydney Opera House, 16 November, 2015

WORLD EDUCATION GAMES

Students flown in from around Australia to Sydney for the World Education Games, 2015

In November, the World Education Games brought together students from around the world to compete in literacy, science and maths. In addition to topping the science category, Australia came second in maths and third overall. Year 7 student, Christina Gao, from ACT, took out first place in science, while WA’s Jamie Richards and Kevin Susanto secured gold in Year 9 and 2 respectively.

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PEOPLE

OTHER LIFE

FIGHTING THE FLAMES Some people take up fishing to relax. Craig Petersen fights fires SCHOOL LEADERS may be used to putting out (allegorical) fires all over their school grounds every day, but few fight actual fires.

Starting his ‘other life’ as part of the Winmalee Rural Fire Brigade as a volunteer firefighter in 1986 while he was still at university, Craig Petersen, principal of Denison College of Secondary Education, soon found himself moving up through the ranks.

In 1994, Petersen joined NSW Fire Brigade (now Fire & Rescue NSW) as a retained firefighter. He resigned in 2008 due to work commitments, only to re-join Rural Fire Service in 2012 at North West (Orange) where he’s now captain.

“We are one of the most active brigades in the Canobolas Zone with around 40 members,” Petersen says. “We have a training drill every Monday night and regular weekend training courses throughout the year. At my current brigade we attend about 50 calls (or incidents) a year.”

In addition to the usual smaller local incidents, Petersen was involved in the Hunter 2001-02 Christmas Fires and also what is now known as Red October in the Blue Mountains of NSW (2013).

While there’s undeniably an adrenalin rush that goes hand-in-hand with fighting 20-metre flames, Petersen also enjoys the quieter side of volunteer life. He attends a range of community awareness activities, including visits to local schools and supporting local charities and community events.

$7bn

The combined national damage bill caused by bushfires over the past 90 years; $2.6bn occurred in the past 13 years

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54%

8 out of 10

Percentage of the most Number of households that devastating bushfires that occur are underinsured, during January and February, according to Insurance including Ash Wednesday and Council of Australia 2009 Black Saturday fires

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