Relieving Principal Report

Niangala Public School's 'exemplary practice' recognised during External Validation Process

On Thursday 7th September was the date for our External Validation Panel to convene. It consisted of Mrs Hendrika Green (Principal, School Leadership) and Mr Wayne Farquahar (Peer Principal), Mr Matt Hobbs (Director Educational Leadership), Mr Michael Windred (Principal, School Leadership) and school team of teachers Mrs Harris, Miss Cattelini and Mrs Crawford. Unfortunately, Mrs Notley couldn’t be in attendance at the panel meeting due to unforeseen circumstances.

The external validation process is an important component of a system-wide approach to school excellence. As a staff, we assessed ourselves for our improvement efforts and used evidence of our practices to support our reflections.  The External Validation Panel considered this evidence (it was a very large submission – we will work to submit a more concise submission next time!) and provided assurance to us that our self-assessments were justified. We had put ourselves as Sustaining and Growing in one area - Student Performance Measures, however the panel deemed our practices and processes demonstrated that we were Excelling in this element so moved us up to Excelling. An area which we identified we need to make a few small tweaks in is School Planning, Implementation and Reporting so we assessed ourselves to be Sustaining and Growing in this area and the panel agreed with this judgement. For all the remaining elements we proved ourselves to be Excelling. So, in summary of the 14 key elements of high-quality practice across the three domains of learning, teaching and leading, Niangala Public School is Excelling in 13 of them and Sustaining and Growing in one element with only very small modifications to be made to achieve an Excelling in this area too. 

The comments throughout the panel meeting were overwhelmingly positive and complementary about the initiatives and practices we have implemented here at Niangala Public School over the past couple of years. It was very affirming for us to hear that the experienced panel who had conducted many of these External Validation Panels named our practices in learning, teaching and leading to be exemplary. 

Of course, none of this would be possible without the awesome team of people that make this school what it is today and everyday!! I have thanked everyone personally that worked so hard to put this submission together, but I would just like to publicly acknowledge all the staff for their amazing and selfless efforts. Thank you to the teaching staff who really worked tirelessly to put the epic submission together and thank you to the administration staff for picking up the pieces and providing time and opportunity for work on the submission. Thank you everyone for the big, the small, the significant and the less significant efforts – they were all noticed and were all greatly appreciated and in the end - worth it!!  What an amazing team. The best!

Whilst this is a time to actually celebrate what we are achieving here at Niangala and that as a staff we are extremely proud of this achievement, we are looking forward to working with our school community to continue sustaining, maintaining and continually improving to provide the students at this wonderful school, the greatest opportunities we can for each and every student to thrive and reach their full potential.