Principals Report

In 2019 I was awarded the Menzies School Leader Fellowship from the Menzies Foundation.  As one of 5 recipients in Australia the fellows were offered a huge raft of professional learning opportunities.  Our school was accepted in the University of Melbourne Schools Network where we developed an action research project on improving the learning experiences for our students in mathematics.  Part of the Fellowship was funding to support travel and connections with other educators anywhere in the world all paid for by the foundation. One of the most important benefits of the scheme was I was able to include my leadership team in most of the professional learning activities.

After much planning and preparation, we decided to travel to the Gympie Region in Queensland to visit three schools; Chancellor State School (1,000 students), Chevallum State School (580 students) and Mango Hill State School (1,700 students).  It was an amazing and eye-opening experience with the three schools visited boasting different strengths and significant points of difference. 

It was a thrill to visit the three schools and meet other proud and passionate professionals all working on the same goal as Berwick Chase.  The tour was facilitated by ‘The Learner First’ consultancy, who we have been using as an external resource to help plan our change agenda.  I want to thank the three Principals and their leadership teams for generously opening their schools to us.  It was amazing to visit so many classrooms and watch the great learning and teaching taking place.  The infectious enthusiasm of students who are fully engaged in their learning is inspiring.

Our entire leadership team was really energised by the tour and I’m not going to lie, swapping 10 degrees and rain for 25 and sunny wasn’t too bad for our spirits either. 

This week we carried on with the mathematics focus hosting Rob from ‘Learner First’ at our school for two full days.  Rob continued to work with the leadership team, our maths leaders Mrs Parker and each year level coordinator.  Our goal is to have each student confident and competent in mathematics and have regular exposure to the mathematical proficiencies of reasoning, understanding and problem solving.

I would like to thank Mrs Brehaut, Mrs Harwood, Ms Meg and Aaron from Tulliallan Primary School, for running the school so smoothly in our absence.

Regards

Chris Short