Your delegates will have shared with you the highlights of our Term State Council meeting. Here’s a recap of a really informative and important two days where we had the opportunity to hear about the successes and the planning for future.

Mark Grant, Executive Director, Leadership and High Performance

Mark Grant, Executive Director, Leadership and High Performance spoke regarding EV dates and how we will receive them in Week 10 this term. His clarity around the Teaching Principals support announcement and the inclusion of EEC’s in this support package. During 2019 this funding will be considered as we head into salaries agreements for 2020. Schools will be notified about their EV dates in Week 10 term 4 their EV process timeframes and we were! 124 TP1 and TP2 schools will also be included.

Anthony Manning, Chief Executive, School Infrastructure NSW

Anthony Manning, Chief Executive, School Infrastructure NSW spoke regarding increasing enrolments, rebuilds and new builds and annual maintenance priorities moving forward being at the discretion of individual schools. There are 75 projects currently under construction with a further 28 awaiting contract. Pop up schools have been established while the schools are built. The intent is to build communities of practice so infrastructure can respond to what we want. Our demountable fleet is a challenge and money has been put into additional demountables by reclaiming from the pop up schools. There is a need to work through a program of how to deal with the aging demountables. He spoke in detail about the Cooler Classrooms initiative. It is a complex project where $500 million is being spent and about 1,000 schools should benefit. Co2 levels can be measured and signals will be given to open a window etc. Commitment was for learning spaces and libraries. Funding will open again next year and schools are encouraged to apply. Importantly he spoke about maintenance and local contractors being an issue in rural areas. Tradies are coming from a long distance away and the local tradies are not being used. FM contract has to be used. Beginning to develop an “airtasker” type model to allow local tradies to respond.

Mark Scott, Secretary, Department of Education

Mark briefed us on the successes over the past twelve months including: - Strategic Plan based on wide consultation is making “progress”, commitment to continual improvement is seeing a lot of work implemented, Aspiring leaders program has received positive feedback – emphasised importance of proactive approach to leadership development, PPA’s DEL feedback has been studied in conjunction with Murat’s version, revamp of School Services continues – importance of schools feeling that they have strong support.

Gerard Gieseken, Chief Financial Officer and Scott Thomson, Executive Director, Corporate Services

• Financial Management Optimisation Project
  This will focus on processes and systems. DoE want to get a simplified financial system that will coordinate planning and budgeting. Streamlined process and procedures. More efficient and effective funding
  More agile budgeting, forecasting and reporting. Resolution of the recurring underspend. Very important that we get on top of this. Wants to get as much as possible into the SBAR
  Schools will be given clarity on what reports they should focus on.
• One Finance Project
  To give clear accountability to a centralised finance function. This will give clarity to schools to go to one point of contact. Taking on board the needs of schools which can be diverse. RACI Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed. Intention is to return to the focus groups for validation.
• Utilities Modelling
  There was a utilities consultation group consulted and they identified that at times utilities costs are above allocation.

Mark Greentree, Director, Technology for Learning

Mark Greentree, Director, Technology for Learning spoke about STEMShare Outcomes including:-

• Raise awareness of effective use of technology to improve student learning
• Enable teachers to understand, experience and embed STEM technologies into teaching and learning
• Support student’s capability to use technology for learning and build digital resilience
• Create a sustainable STEM community of practice within the NSW Department of Education

Mark shared the notion that he’d employed outstanding educators from schools – now available to your school

Kits – book through OLIVER (library). The training – multi-faceted, online, face to face and demonstration of kits available for conferences

Any learning experience that is:

• Risky
• Impossible
• Dangerous
• Expensive
  Can be covered in virtual reality.

STEMShare online community

• Yammer
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Kits are shipped in Weeks 9 & 10 so they are available to schools/teachers to play with them in the vacation and start teaching with them day 1 of term.

The Hon. Rob Stokes MP, Minister for Education spoke about: -

Opportunity - providing for the present and the future to ensure schools are equipped with infrastructure that works $6 Billion over 4 years on over 170 projects for new schools and significant upgrades. He expressed his commitment to ensuring that the buildings say something about the importance of public education and the value of public education. There’s an investment of $¾ Billion over 4 years for catching up on day to day maintenance. Colossal investment to re-baseline. There will be air conditioning in schools. Current electricity grids are not built to cater for the loads. By providing energy onsite or through grid upgrades. Smart systems with Air quality monitors. More than 900 schools in the 1st round.

Funding - RAM allocation – stayed true to our commitments $50 Million in flex funding for administrative support. - Teaching Principals – strategic support for extra resources. Working with the PPA to ensure a recurrent allocation in the future - 10 year funding deal has been secured. Ensuring public education is not left as a poor cousin. Ensuring the rhetoric and actions are needs based and sector blind. Don’t believe federal approach is fair and had to publicly speak out about it. Fed government cloaking in the veneer of parent choice. 40% of catholic young people attend public schools. Separating and dividing can only weaken our society. All school communities are important, work together to secure shared advantage for students in NSW.

Administrative Burden - Administrative load has become frankly ridiculous so trying to relieve the burden. Asking for all tasks, ‘Why are you doing it? And how many hours/week will it add to the workload”. - Assets: Improving ability to make local decisions rather than an assets process, an ongoing piece of work to support principals to have more discretion. We are still asking questions: Passwords, mailboxes, school profiles, AZT.......etc. NESA is the next one we need to tackle. Ministers question:- Tell us how many hours this task will add to the workload of the principal?” is changing the culture over time.

Liana Downey, Executive Director, Delivery; Kelly Edmunds, Director, Strategic Projects, Delivery Unit; Melissa Clements, Director, Disability, Learning and Support; Jessica Ellis, Delivery Unit

Liana Downey spoke about the broad scope of work - disabilities – experience of families doesn’t necessarily match our experience of the system. - 4x times current rate of students coming into our system - enhanced tracking of outcomes for students with disabilities - what do Principals need to improve the outcomes for students with disabilities.

Joint assets and disabilities planning group – meet needs but also needs to delve into legislative requirements
Review access requests system – works well for parents, schools and state office – steps forward on earlier identification and clearer demonstration of learning outcomes.

Kelly Edmunds spoke about reducing the administrative burden on NSW Schools.

• Evident the amount of workload
• 40% of time being spent on administration
• 47% of teacher time spent on administration.
• 97% said Increase in administration over 5 years. Identifying opportunities to take things off our desk - Initial focus was principal workload. - Scope has increased to across the whole school including school admin staff. Some of the actions forward include: Single sign on - SAP on mobiles - Reducing blank reports - Integrate student attendance - Improve professional learning (MyPL) - Improve daily banking/cash discrepancy management. – Intranet speed and efficiency.

New strategic planning and budgeting process, new filter at the budgeting and planning end.

Ultimately we will have a yearly master schedule and have line of sight.

Ryan Thomson Director strategic HR

Ryan Thomson Director strategic HR spoke about Staffing - Review methodology for staffing - Workshop staffing methodology (PPA Executive included in consultation meeting). - Not doing it on their own, tapping into the work going on in other directorates. - Clearly show what will come of changes.

Key themes included: Flexibility and adequacy of resourcing - Ensure we have right mix and quality of staff - Create a meaningful implementation timeline.

Georgina Harrison, Deputy Secretary, Educational Services

Spoke about the Ed Services Review – four areas of focus. 16 projects within. Learning and Well Being the focus- tailored support to suit every school – we know this makes the greatest difference to student success - building new resources, including formative assessment. - prioritising teaching time – no requirement to take up PLAN2 next year - working on the Service Navigator – will operate on a mobile - leading our improvement journey - because as communities evolve, so do the needs of our schools - attracting people to work in the DoE. Being our own TAA. Enabling accreditation to higher levels.