The team from Leadreship & High Performance have shared the following:

Principal, School Leadership

We have finalised recruitment, and currently have a full team of Principals, School Leadership (PSL). We have also recruited the equivalent of two Small School Principals to support the leaders of small schools.

There are 21 Principal Coach-Mentors (P C-M) working across the state

PSLs and P C-Ms are providing significant ongoing support to principals in managing wellbeing matters. Up until the beginning of June they have provided support to over 500 principals around wellbeing matters.

PSLs are currently coaching 493 Newly Appointed First-time Principals, relieving Principals as well as an increasing number of more established principals

Collaboration and Program Delivery

The PSL team has been involved in a range of co-designed and co-delivered programs. These include:

• Data Skills and Use - a capacity building project with CESE; with over 93% of the respondents indicating that they found the professional learning to be highly effective
• A School Excellence Leaders Project that is being trialed in Rural South and West and is a collaborative piece that includes Highly Accomplished and Lead Teachers (HALTs), PSLs, Directors, Educational Leadership (DELs), and Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB)
• Extended Principal Induction Program that is being coordinated by Leadership Pathways.

Peer Principal Panel Training

Over 780 principals have now been trained as peer principals for External Validation. This included 236 participants at the Peer Principal training this term (including 117 new peer principals). Feedback from experienced peer principals was strongly appreciative of providing a condensed follow-up package to them this year (rather than the full two-day training provided to those serving for the first time).

External Validation Panels

These are well underway, beginning in Week 5 of this term and will run through to Week 5 of Term 4. The validation team have made every effort to match peer principals to schools similar to their contexts, and as geographically close to them as possible. Feedback to date has been very positive.

High Performance

Mastery of Teaching

The Mastery of Teaching Program was designed to increase the number of Highly Accomplished (HA) teachers in the department, with a focus on improving the quality of teaching practice at the classroom and school level.

The program is currently operating in 21 rural, remote and regional networks across the Rural North, Regional North and Rural South and West operational directorates. The program is structured to provide support to each identified teacher and includes robust identification, critical reflection and submission of evidence. A total of 74 teachers are now nearing the end of the first phase of robust identification.

Principals and directors have made their nominations, existing HALTs have completed observation visits to schools, and nominated teachers have engaged in detailed self-reflection processes using AITSL and NESA online tools. An expert state panel, which will include primary and secondary principals, will review evidence collected for each teacher from every stage of the identification process in early Semester 2.

The panel will then recommend ‘HA ready’ candidates to be supported by the program to achieve Highly Accomplished teacher accreditation over the next 12 months. Principals play a vital role in identifying and supporting nominated teachers and form an integral component in the successful delivery of this program. 

For more information about the Mastery of Teaching Program, please contact the Mastery of Teaching team at masteryofteaching@det.nsw.edu.au.

Schools offering NESA registered professional development courses

During Term 1 and 2, 2019 there has been an increase in the number of schools offering school- based NESA registered professional development courses to their teachers. This year over 241 courses from schools have been approved, equating to an additional 1,000 hours of NESA registered professional development available for teachers in the system.

Leadership and High Performance manages the department’s endorsed provider status with NESA and are able to assist schools in having their tailored, context specific professional development approved. Further details can be accessed on the Teacher Quality and Accreditation website, which provides the latest information and support materials on registered professional development.  

For information and advice, please contact the Teacher Quality team in the Leadership and High Performance directorate at teacherquality@det.nsw.edu.au or phone 7814 3854. For information relating to the MyPL system, please contact the MyPL team.