- Reflect on key takeaways from the conference and what they mean for students.
- Study protocols that support effective implementation of these takeaways in schools.
- Ensure student voice is a key part of the school improvement process.
In this masterclass, Tim Warwick aims to help school leaders answer the question: how can we take the practices that support each and every student (the ones we’ve learned across the PETAA 2021 conference sessions) back into our schools?
Most school improvement ideas come much more from adults than students, especially our most diverse students. How can we put students at the centre?
To put students at the centre of school improvement, we must first ask ourselves:
- How do our students influence our purpose and priorities?
- How do our students inform our actions?
- How do our students help us monitor our progress?
He goes on to show the department-provided framework for School Improvement (from Victoria, but there is one in every state and territory) and says this is only a starting point for making sure improvement plans are contextualised to each individual school and its students.
Each of these frameworks is ultimately leading us on a school improvement journey to answer the question: How do we break down the change, give student voices ownership and then make that change and improvement visible?
He specifically focuses in on developing an individual school’s vision with students, and working on 5 week improvement plans ( a “lightning bolt moment” to break down change).
First, he walks us through the case study of Gowrie St Primary School, and how this model led to student-centred, improved outcomes for them.
Then, he leads class participants in an activity to focus in on one student: this allows us to re-think our school community, undoing assumptions. What are one or two things we would like to be true for this individual student as a result of our school improvement plans?
Next, we are asked to take a look at how students are currently influencing our purpose and priorities and taking that into the creation of our school vision. With a deep and constant understanding of our students, their context, and their needs and desires, we can develop a rich and real vision.
This is where 5 week improvement plans come in! Instead of just our 3-5 year strategies, or annual plans, we need to measure success by what can also be short term, immediate and cyclical.
These plans allow us to:
- Break change down into discrete chunks
- Make it visible and known to all
- Focus on the change we want for students
It is important that we translate any high level strategy documents down to the individual student level, and make student change the focus rather than staff change.
Tim wraps up the session by explaining how to implement and monitor these changes through learning walks, and how to start this process in our own schools immediately.
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