Teaching & Learning

Reporting Update

Senior School – Term One

Teachers will assess students’ Effort & Dedication six times each year for most subjects. 

The Effort & Dedication Round 2 is Wednesday 26 March 2026.

Reminder: this year we have streamlined the Effort & Dedication Reports to make them clearer for both parents and students. The previous five rating categories have been refined to three — Always, Regularly and Cause for Concern — to make progress easier to interpret. If a student receives a Cause for Concern rating, teachers will include additional information to support understanding and outline next steps.

Important contacts:

Mr Rod Smith (Head of Academic and Data Services) 

Mrs Viv Bath (Deputy Head of Junior School) 

Mr Nicholas Rasmussen (Academic Services Reports Manager) 

Ms Katie Morris (Academic Services Reports Administrator) 

Meet Mr Wilbur Donovan: Head of Teaching and Learning

This year we welcomed Mr Wilbur Donovan to Girton Grammar as our Head of Teaching and Learning. Wilbur comes to us with a wealth of experience and a passion for helping both students and teachers flourish. He has a long-standing commitment to shaping high‑quality learning and is excited to contribute to Girton’s continued growth and shared vision for excellence.

What attracted you to join the Girton community this year? I was drawn to the school because of its strong potential and its clear sense of direction. I am deeply committed to the idea that students in regional Australia deserve access to an education that is every bit as ambitious, enriching, and high quality as that offered anywhere else in the country. From my earliest conversations with Girton's principal, Dr Emma O'Rielly, I could see a genuine desire to keep building that kind of excellence, and I felt a strong alignment between that vision and the work I have been leading throughout my career.

While I have held broad senior leadership roles, a significant part of my work has consistently centred on teaching and learning. I have always been most energised by the challenge of improving classroom practice, strengthening curriculum, and creating the conditions for both students and teachers to thrive. This role offered the opportunity to bring that focus even more clearly to the forefront within a school community that is ready to take the next step in its learning journey.

There was also a personal dimension to the decision. As a parent, I was paying close attention to the kind of school community I wanted for my own children. Of the schools I engaged with, Girton was the one that stood out most clearly. It felt like a place with heart, with momentum, and with a real commitment to young people. That combination made the decision especially compelling.

What are your priorities for 2026? For 2026, my priority is to build on the strong work already happening at Girton and help bring greater coherence, clarity, and momentum to the teaching and learning agenda across the whole school. There is already a great deal to celebrate, so this is not about starting from scratch. It's about strengthening what is working well and ensuring we have the structures in place to keep improving over time.

A major focus will be on enlivening the new Girton pedagogical framework so that it becomes something that is clearly understood and consistently visible in classrooms across the school. An important part of that work will be the introduction of an instructional coaching approach, designed to support teachers in refining their practice in a professional, practical, and growth-focused way. The goal is to keep investing in teacher expertise, because the quality of teaching has the greatest in-school impact on student learning.

I have already started working hard to establish a strong Prep to 12 Academic Committee that can help lead thinking around whole school teaching and learning priorities. In a school like Girton, it's important that we work with a shared sense of direction across year levels and learning areas, while still responding thoughtfully to the different challenges and opportunities that emerge along the way. 

What is explicit teaching and why is it important? Explicit teaching is a pedagogy centred on clarity, structure, and purposeful instruction. In simple terms, it means that teachers do not leave important learning to chance. They clearly explain new content, model what success looks like, guide students through practice, check for understanding, and then gradually build students towards greater independence.

This is especially important because much of what students are asked to learn at school is genuinely new to them. Whether it is a concept in Mathematics, a writing skill in English, or key knowledge in Science or Humanities, students need to be explicitly taught both the knowledge itself and how to think with it. That is how strong foundations are built. Once students have secure foundational knowledge and skills, they are in a much better position to engage in deeper thinking, problem solving, creativity, and application.

Explicit teaching is also strongly aligned with what the science of learning tells us about how memory works. Students learn best when new material is introduced in manageable steps, connected to prior knowledge, and reinforced through practice and review so that it moves from short term memory into long term memory. When knowledge becomes securely stored in long term memory, students are able to recall it more easily, use it more fluently, and build more complex understanding over time.

For me, explicit teaching matters because it gives more students access to success. It reduces ambiguity, supports confidence, and helps ensure that learning is not reserved for the students who can work things out independently, but is made visible and achievable for everyone.

What experiences have most shaped your approach to teaching and learning? What has shaped my approach most is a belief that teaching must be intentional. The longer I have worked in education, the more convinced I have become that strong outcomes do not happen by accident. Great teaching is not simply about working hard or caring deeply, although both matter. It is about being deliberate in how we design learning, how we explain new ideas, how we respond to student understanding, and how we build a culture of high expectations in every classroom.

My experience across teaching and senior leadership has only strengthened that view. I have seen that when schools are clear about what they value in teaching and learning, and when teachers are supported to keep refining their craft, the impact on students can be significant. I have also seen that students are capable of far more than we sometimes realise when the teaching is clear, the expectations are high, and the support is there.

A big part of what has shaped me has been working so closely in teaching and learning leadership. That has given me the opportunity to think deeply about curriculum, pedagogy, teacher development, and what it takes to lift practice across a whole school. It has reinforced for me that the most important work in any school still comes back to what happens between teachers and students in the classroom. That is where confidence is built, knowledge is formed, and futures begin to take shape.

Above all, what has shaped me most is the simple fact that I still believe teaching is one of the most important and rewarding professions there is. I love the intellectual side of it, I love the relational side of it, and I love that no two days are ever quite the same. There is something incredibly meaningful about helping young people discover what they are capable of, and that is what continues to energise me in this work.

Senior School Maths Help

Maths Help is available on Mondays and Wednesdays from 3:30 - 4:30 pm in Room N15, N17 and N18. Maths Help provides an excellent opportunity for students to seek assistance with challenging questions, revise for upcoming assessments, or complete homework with the support of a maths teacher. Attendance is optional, with students welcome to attend for all or part of the session. 

Ms Emily Ryan

Head of Mathematics