A Learning Organisation

The first week of the 2022 school year has been a very positive start for all three campuses. Despite the ongoing interference of COVID, school hasn’t felt this normal for some time. This relative normality has enabled those of us in leadership of this fabulous School to return to considering our future.

Imagined in 2019 and implemented in 2020, our Vision 2020 and Beyond Strategic Plan describes our intention to better serve our students’ wellbeing, to better nurture their character and capabilities and to strengthen their academic outcomes and achievements more broadly. The implementation of this Plan has been substantially thwarted by interruptions due to COVID. Throughout these two years, some priorities became impossibilities and some were postponed as leaders and staff pivoted to focus on fresh priorities related to the challenges of lockdown and COVID-Safety, among others. The limited bandwidth that remained was invested in improvements to teaching and learning, as well as updating failing software to better facilitate both learning and the systems that support the operation of the School. Whilst not yet complete, these initiatives have already begun to bear fruit.

During 2022 we plan to review our Strategic Plan. Parents and students will be consulted via survey as part of this process; one that will enable us to evaluate where we are as a School and the direction in which we should go. Information in relation to this survey will come later in the year. The process of staff consultation commenced in Term 4, 2021 with a survey of all staff; those present at the time and those recently departed. This survey was aimed at discovering what actions we could take as a School to best support our staff to be their best at work. After an earlier presentation to the Executive team, on the first day of the Staff Conference, Dr Louise Parkes of Voice Project gave a presentation to the whole staff team summarising the feedback from the survey. This will be followed by a presentation to the Board in February.

I am glad to report that this survey provided the School with a lot of valuable feedback. Having now processed the feedback, the BMGS Executive have identified a range of priorities that were central to our Vision 2020 and Beyond, that will receive further attention and remain in our next Strategic Plan. We will work hard to continue to improve the clarity and efficiency of processes; a priority made more challenging in the light of the added complexity and ever evolving priorities of recent years, especially whilst forging forward with the implementation of new software; a challenge even in the most stable of times. We also plan to prioritise the improvement of professional learning and performance feedback processes, priorities deferred in recent years because various elements were not plausible during COVID-disruptions. This remains a priority because it is only ‘learning organisations’ that become stronger over time. Peter Senge, who popularised the term ‘learning organisations’ in his book The Fifth Discipline, described them as places “where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free and where people are continually learning how to learn together.” This is what we aspire to here at Grammar; teachers learning alongside students, learning alongside parents. This principle has been at the heart of my vision for schools for many years and is the reason that, even before staff provided their feedback, the School had appointed Mr Sanders and Mr Coote, whose roles centre on this priority.

We have, however, also identified a range of new priorities to which we will give attention to better support our staff this year. These priorities include the quality of consultation, scheduling, planning, communication and follow through, especially in relation to changing practices. I am not surprised by this type of feedback in the wake of COVID disruptions and forced adaptation, but nonetheless take it very seriously. Staff have been assured that these matters have been placed at the top of our School’s list of priorities and have the absolute commitment of the whole Executive team.

The three oars pictured on the ship of the School’s Ad Altiora Framework for Learning and Life describe the process we must all take to become all that we can be. Having received valuable feedback we have reflected on what we should do differently, mustered the courage to do it and we will now demonstrate the perseverance required to form a new way of operating. This is not something any of us can do just once if we hope to reach a standard of excellence, but a cyclical process that should continue throughout our lives, much like the rhythmic rowing of a sea-faring galley. So, that is what the leadership of BMGS will do; keep listening to valuable feedback, keep planning for improvement and keep on keeping on, rowing together as a team.

Mr Ian Maynard

Headmaster

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