30 June 2017

Newsletter Articles

President’s Report

It has been great for many of the Executive to get around to a few Area Council meetings following our Term 2 State Council. At our executive meeting this week we discussed how colleagues are still concerned with the workload and, even when bogged down with checking Reports, are reporting that Term 2 is much better than Term 1.

Both the Minister and Secretary are acutely aware of the workload intensification and impact on our Well- being and addressed this at our Term 2 State Council. The Minister, Rob Stokes, is certainly keen to investigate a whole package of support for principals and the Secretary has instigated the Deloitte’s Principal Work Load & Time Use Study to gather further information on what is happening in our schools. State Council delegates asked many questions relating to the mooted increase in Director’s positions, the need to change their roles and how they would support Principals.

The Budget announced last week was a huge infrastructure budget with $4.6 billion allocated for capital works to 2020-21 aimed at supporting schools to get ready for the predicted 164,000 students expected over the next 15 years. It also included $747 million over the next four years to address priority maintenance in schools. We look forward to ongoing discussions, planning and consultation with our new CEO of School Infrastructure NSW, Anthony Manning.

Our Communication with you

Last Term we sent out our first e-newsletter through Schoolzine and I mentioned the fairly low readership of it and requested articles to make it more interesting. Please if you are doing anything in your school, community of schools, PPC, that would be of interest to your colleagues, please forward to me [word documents + pics not embedded in word documents + separate movie that we can upload onto our private Utube page].

We have also launched our App which has caused some hassles for our colleagues. Unfortunately there is an old App that is inactive and still available….please only up load the SZapp App [instructions are in this Newsletter]. We currently have 33% of our members who have signed up, so we are waiting for more so we can start using this great facility.

Gonski

Thank you to everyone who took part in the many activities that aimed at securing the vote in the Senate for Gonski v1. Unfortunately, we have missed the expected Years 5 & 6 funding and are awaiting a clearer picture of what we will be receiving.

I sort clarification from the Martin Graham [ED External Relations Policy | External Affairs and Regulation] and the following gives us a better picture:

• NSW has remained committed to Years 5 and 6 of the NERA Agreement – so the additional funding from the State will continue to be provided. This is ongoing funding, so the increases remain as a permanent ‘uplift’ in schools funding.
• The Commonwealth will not fund years 5 and 6 of the NERA.
• However the recent changes to the Act in the Senate means that schools (including public schools) will receive more than was offered in the last Commonwealth budget (although still short of our NERA Agreement). So in addition to the State funding increases for 2018 and 2019 there will now be some additional Commonwealth funding.
• A ‘Schools Resourcing Board’ has been established to provide advice to the Commonwealth Minister on resourcing issues. The first two ‘reviews’ are to consider the SES model for non-government school funding (in response to concerns by the Catholic sector) and to consider the new loading for students with a disability. While this Board has been called ‘independent’ it reports only to the Commonwealth Minister, and the Commonwealth Minister does not need to act on its recommendations.
• The new arrangements provide some funding certainty, and the same Schooling Resource Standard (including loadings) remain as they were in our NERA agreement. The NSW RAM is consistent with this methodology – providing ongoing certainty.

Principal Workload and Time Use Study

Following representations by both PPA and SPC, the Secretary, through CESE, has organized this study. The research activities to be conducted by Deloitte, include a range of direct observations conducted over a full school day of 120 Principals, interviews and focus groups, with a randomly selected group of principals from a representative sample of schools.

Several of our members have been contacted, however there has been a shift in the timing which has caused us some angst. Initially researchers were to be at schools with principals for the entire time they were at school, however this changed and now they are only attending 8.30 – 3.30. We have made our objections known to the Secretary and Minister and believe this action may impact on the authenticity of the study.

Principal Support

At State Council we again went over the procedures for obtaining Principal Support and showed on the website where application forms for support are. We also showed the Flow Chart that Presidents have been asked to personalise and send out to members.

Flourish

As mentioned in our last couple of Newsletters, The Shellharbour PPC has been involved in a pilot program with Dr Adam Fraser with a focus on:

Studying a group of Principals in detail to understand what the job entails, what roles and responsibilities make up the job, how much time is spent in each role, what parts of their role energise them and get them into flow, what parts of their role stress them and crush their energy levels, what are the habits and mindsets of the most effective principals, what strategies are most effective to improve the principal’s wellbeing, finally how do the most effective principals create a cohesive culture in their schools.

In addition to the study the program includes a face to face program (4, full day workshops every 10weeks) to help the principals be more effective in their role, create a healthier culture in their school and develop habits that foster and look after their physical and mental wellbeing. One of the other focuses of the face-to -face program is to develop the connection and collegial support within the participants.

It is a 3 phase program:

Phase 1

The research phase - partnering with Deakin Business School to understand the world of school Principals.

Phase 2

The intervention phase - delivery of a face to face program that helps the principals be more effective and have flourishing wellbeing.

Phase 3

Re-testing phase - where we measure the impact of the project.

There are 3 groups up and running with individual agreements with Adam Fraser [Shellharbour, South Coast & Maitland]. Whilst this has suited these groups, we have decided, for equity reasons, to step in and centralize our arrangements to ensure this program can be rolled out and our members are able to afford to attend. Participation will cost $2,600 which may be subsidized by sponsorship, Director’s funds etc. By centralizing the agreements, we can cover small attendance groups in the country, by larger attendance in metro areas.

Based on the results of our Principal Support Survey, which indicated where the most need is for our principals, we are now organizing venues and when to start the next iterations of this program. The 4 broad areas identified are:

• Broken Hill
• Lismore/ Tweed Heads Ballina
• Granville/ Blue Mountains
• Hornsby /Parramatta

We are currently organizing dates and venues and then will get back to you with more detailed information. Whilst these groups are loosely based on PPC groups, participants from outside these groups are welcomed.

We have met with Teachers Health attempting to gain sponsorship and will continue along these discussions and hopefully will address members of the Teachers Service group [TMB, Teachers Health, Federation & State Super] to see if we can gain sponsorship to lower the costs. It is a work in progress.

At the end of the year we will do an evaluation and determine where to next. We have discussed the possibility of running up to 7 next year, but it will be determined by the evaluations.

Local Schools, Local Decisions (LSLD) Evaluation

In 2012, the NSW Department of Education (DOE) began a phased implementation of the Local Schools, Local Decisions (LSLD) reform. This reform enacts some of the principles detailed in the Federal Government’s National Plan for School Improvement (NPSI), as agreed in the National Education Reform Agreement (NERA). The primary intention of LSLD is to give NSW public schools more authority to make local decisions about how best to meet the needs of their students. The reform package focuses on five interrelated areas that have been identified as key to building a more dynamic public education system.

CESE is conducting an evaluation to better understand:

1. How the RAM allocations have been spent by schools.
2. The impact that LSLD has had on school management and local decision-making practices; and
3. The impact LSLD and RAM funding has had on school and student outcomes.

NSWPPA Response: The Learning Innovations Reference Group has completed the NSWPPA submission to CESE. This submission is a collation of responses from the NSWPPA and as such represents the views, concerns and opinions of Primary Principals across NSW. This data was collected from Primary Principal Council meetings, surveys, telephone communication and interviews. The final report and recommendations are due in late 2018.

Review of the Curriculum, Planning, Programming, Assessing & Reporting to Parents K-12 Policy

Major changes to the educational landscape have occurred in the 10 years since the Policy, each significant enough to warrant a review of the Policy. They include the Australian Curriculum, National Assessment Program, Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, NSW Educational Standards Authority and system registration, National and State Literacy and Numeracy Strategies and National Education Reform Agreement (NERA) funding. Changes in classroom practice, influenced by the above changes, but also by significant shifts in the educational research have also occurred and the Policy no longer reflects contemporary understandings of teaching and learning.

What are the key recommendations of the review?

• A high level Policy and accompanying procedures needs to be future focused and able to provide flexibility for further changes in Federal and State policy, school practice and advances in technology.
• The Policy has a name change to more accurately capture Teaching and Learning.
• The Policy categories will also be reconsidered to capture the integrated nature of planning, classroom practice, assessing and reporting.
• The Policy Standards become the Policy Implementation Procedures and contain further detail which can be updated as required and linked to support for schools.
• The Literacy Policy, Numeracy Policy and Environmental Education Policy will be rescinded. Each of these will be incorporated into the new policy as cross curriculum priorities.

Syllabus development news from NSW Education Standards Authority

The next rounds of syllabus development have been announced. These are:

• Science and Technology
• PDHPE
• Chinese/Japanese

Future developments include:

• French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Spanish, Korean
• Creative Arts

The NSWPPA now has representation on the major stakeholder committees. A range of support materials will be available to Principals and schools. These include: sample scope and sequences, sample teaching units both multistage and integrated. NESA is calling for a Register of curriculum writers

• for syllabus writing, reviewing
• support documents
• work samples
• teaching units

If you are interested, please go to:

Reading Recovery NSWPPA Survey

After the CESE evaluation of Reading Recovery the DoE is conducting a review of the program. The NSWPPA conducted a state-wide survey and presented an evidence based response.

The NSWPPA is an active member of the Literacy and Numeracy and NAPLAN online Stakeholder Engagement Group. This exists to support the planning, implementation, communication and evaluation of the State-wide Literacy and Numeracy Strategy and the NAPLAN Online transition program through regular and constructive stakeholder engagement. On the table currently are:

• Learning Progressions, timelines and equating
• Curriculum Policy updates
• Early Action for Success
• Best Start Year 7

Learning Progressions – update

The National Literacy and Numeracy Learning Progressions have been developed by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) in collaboration with the NSW Department of Education. Version 1 of the learning progressions was completed in 2016 and trialled nationally by ACARA and NSW across states and territories during term 1, 2017. In response to the trial results and teacher feedback, version 1.1 has been developed incorporating the recommended amendments. This trial of version 1.1 will inform the development of the final version of the National Literacy and Numeracy Learning Progressions and its implementation in NSW schools. The National Literacy and Numeracy Learning Progressions are due for publication by ACARA early in 2018 and implementation in NSW Action Plan schools from the beginning of 2018.

The trial will be conducted in schools from 17 July to 14 August, 2017 and will involve a three-stage process.

• Part A – Familiarisation with the Learning Progressions (20 July, 2017)
• Part B - Student selection, assessment and data entry (17 July -14 August)
• Part C – Online survey (available from17 July -14 August)

NAPLAN Online

For schools interested in familiarising themselves with the NAPLAN Online format there is a NAPLAN Online demonstration site that includes sample tests for each NAPLAN year. Use the following link:

Further information about NAPLAN Online is available on the national ACARA website:

Growing Schools

I attended a meeting at Matthew Pearce PS recently hosted by Principal Kim Fawcett and chaired by Parramatta PPC President Craig Brown that focused on the local schools that are growing well beyond their sites and staffing formulae. Deputy Secretary Murat Dizdar, HR ED, Trina Schmidt, John Niesch, Director of Planning & Strategy in AMD and several Directors were there to discuss the key issues. With 10 primary schools having over 1000 enrolments in February and more reaching that number, it is important that the staffing formula (particularly Executive entitlement & SASS staffing) needs to be extended. Of equal importance is the provision of classrooms, over crowded sites, demountables and their replacement.

Trina has already commenced discussions on Workplace planning this week with Deloitte and several Principals. We need to watch this space.

Leadership Development

Vice President Lyn Davis advises planning is well under way for the 2018 Art of Leadership courses. Venues are still to be decided, however we have decided on locations:

Stronger Smarter Institute – Leadership Training

Australia’s Biggest Indigenous Initiative in Education: For Good Reasons

The Stronger Smarter Institute believes Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander students and their families deserve excellence in local schools and communities across Australia.

We have delivered on our objective for over a decade. The flagship Stronger Smarter Leadership Program has trained 2,448 teachers, community leaders, educators, Aboriginal Education Workers and school leaders from across Australia (7 February 2017).

Today more than 80% of our graduates are in active teaching duties. We train educators. We build efficacy and workforce engagement. The Stronger Smarter Leadership Program trains in the ‘how’. It offers practices, behaviours and processes so participants build school and classroom cultures that are the cement of school improvement agendas.

Collaborating and supporting change with school and community leaders is key. Our partners in change are community members, departments of education and independent schools.

The Stronger Smarter Institute and the Australian Primary Principals’ Association (APPA) will host a Stronger Smarter Leadership program (SSLP) in Western Sydney at the Rooty Hill RSL Club on 29 August – 1 September and 2-3 November. Please contact Dyonne Anderson telephone 0437 421 341 or Michal Purcell telephone 0428 801 883 at the Stronger Smarter Institute for further details and to register for the SSLP. Places are limited to 25 participants.

APPA – Connected Leader

Below is the next issue of Connected Leader and it is ideal to send to your Leadership Team and, indeed, all staff in your school. Not only bringing a wide range of news and views, Connected Leader also challenges our thinking and offers valuable professional learning opportunities.

I hope you can forward Connected Leader to your staff.

APPA - Annual Conference

Late News on “Kids Matter”

Vice President Lyn Davis provided the following information regarding Kids Matter:

The Department of Health released the announcement that BeyondBlue would lead the development of a new MHIE (Mental Health in Education) program launching in 2018. They will work with Early Childhood Australia and Headspace. Work will commence July 2017 and transition support will available to engaged KidsMatter and MindMatters schools in the later half of Term 3 and Term 4 2017.

We hope you enjoy our 3rd edition of What’s Hot using Schoolzine. As always, your Executive Team is keen to support you. Please feel free to contact us.

Enjoy your break, take some time to re-charge the batteries and enjoy a more relaxed time before we commence Semester 2.

Regards

Deputy President Robyn Evans; Secretary Jackie Malecki; Treasurer Rob Walker and Vice Presidents: Lyn Davis, Terry Fisher, John Mularczyk, Di Robertson, Louise Green, Ian Reeson and Phil Seymour President.

Schoolzine

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