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This was site was designed by our staff to share high quality professional practice with each other and with colleagues who had asked us to share our work.
As part of the school’s 60th anniversary celebrations in 2022 we decided that, instead of just presenting at conferences or writing professional articles, we could share our work online.
Each section of this website showcases a strategic project that has made an impact on our practice and on student learning and progress.
Some of these projects focus on changing adult practice, some on changing student behaviour and some on responding to the nature of the community and partners with whom we work.
Please note that the website will be updated regularly and that this version is our launch prototype. If you have any questions for the school based on the content on this website, please contact the school using the details as listed below.
Our strategic purposes and projects
Our strategic purposes and projects
As the overview below shows, the school has been on a 9 year strategic journey since 2015, using each version of the NSW Department of Education School Planning process to innovate, sustain and grow. We seek alignment across the strategic projects and our operational practices. We also seek continuity as well change over time.
The strategic projects described in detail on this website are those from 2018-2020 and from 2021 – 2023/4. We hope you will enjoy the professional practice we have shared and simply ask that, if you use the material you acknowledge that the intellectual property belongs to the school, the Department of Education and to the authors who have allowed us to use their work. Please acknowledge that in any use you make of the ideas, practices and resources.
In our most recent plan, we are focused on 3 strategic directions and 8 strategic projects. These are described in the strategic projects section
It became our school’s goal to have teaching staff set their own professional goals, undertake high impact professional learning and deliver their professional practice at the “highly accomplished” standard and descriptors. In the outline of the standards, teachers whose practice is demonstrated at “highly accomplished” are “recognised as highly effective, skilled practitioners” who can “work independently and collaboratively to improve their own practice and the practice of colleagues” (Teacher Standards (aitsl.edu.au) page 7).
All school-designed professional learning and each of the strategic projects described on this site use the “highly accomplished” and/or “lead” level descriptors to describe the “level of practice” expected in planning, implementing and reviewing strategic and operational priorities.
We used the highly accomplished standard descriptors to shift practice from the “minimum” and we established practices, structures and professional development plans that allowed all teaching staff to engage with practice at a higher level.
Critical to our success is adapting the language of our practice to ensure that the key terms described in the higher-level descriptors were used to plan the professional learning tasks we complete. Just as we do in planning student learning, we plan staff and school learning knowing that “task predicts performance” (City, EA et al, 2009 Instructional Rounds in Education – Principle 4; p30) and that task design needs to enable all learners to achieve the “success criteria” for the task.
The Highly Accomplished School
The Highly Accomplished School
In Australia, there are agreed standards for teaching Teacher Standards (aitsl.edu.au). They operate at 4 levels with descriptors for each level – graduate, proficient (initial accreditation), highly accomplished and lead. They underpin and accredit our work in the profession.
Source: AITSL aitsl.edu.au
When they were initially launched, there was (based on the school’s experience with professional standards since 2006) a mistaken assumption that most teachers would demonstrate their practice at “proficient”. It has taken many years for bureaucrats to recognise that the “proficient” standards are like an initial driver’s licence and that many teachers are both highly qualified academically through their university degrees and, within a few years of experience, have moved their practice well beyond the initial level of “proficient”.
To address the needs of our student demographic (70% of our students have families who are represented in the bottom two quadrants of the socio-economic and educational advantage measures), the school needs teachers who are learning and mastering their craft at a faster rate than the traditional teacher career trajectories presume.
The Importance of Teams
In a Highly Accomplished School, the capacity to work together is fundamental to practice. In secondary schools, traditional “faculty teams” and critical subject pedagogies often dominate the structures used by the school to enact its operational and strategic plans.
At the same time strategic and operational purposes, plans and projects often require cross-disciplinary strategies to be most effective.
To effect the strategic and operational purposes of the school, the following cross-faculty teams have been critical:
Professional Learning and Leadership Teams
For the last 3 school plans these teams have been the teams that have led the strategic projects. The teams have given opportunity to aspiring leaders and to all staff to work together to research, define key theories of practice, undertake professional learning, design and deliver high impact professional learning, design project prototypes, implement projects, monitor the projects and evaluate them.
Personalised learning and wellbeing teams
The Junior School (Years 7-9) and Senior School teams (Years 10-12) have responsibility for delivering the school’s wellbeing, personalised learning and student agency initiatives. Using a wide range of data including the Tell Them from Me surveys (used in all government schools in NSW), these teams design, create and implement universal, targeted and intensive programs and activities for each year group, targeted groups of students and, where identified, intensive programs of support. Initiatives can be curricular, co-curricular and/or extra-curricular depending on the identified needs of students. It is also important to note that students work with and in each of these teams to analyse data, make recommendations and give feedback.
Learning Support Team
Using equity funding this cross-faculty team is responsible for intensive and targeted support provided through the school’s Learning Centre, Senior Study, COVID Intensive Learning Support tuition, and small group support in classrooms. The team is composed of 5.0 (FTE - full time equivalent) teachers, 8.0FTE school learning and support officers, and 1.0 FTE school administrative support officers.
The School Operations Team
This team composed of both teaching and administrative staff is responsible for the day to day management and the effective implementation of the 11 areas of the school operations plan.
Watch the explainer videos of each PLLT - featuring group leaders as they unveil the core of their initiatives. Gain insight into what drove their actions, the innovative methods employed, and the profound impact achieved. Join us in this journey as leaders reflect on their experiences, providing a unique perspective on the transformative path they've navigated.
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