Teaching and Learning

School Improvement Planning

Andrew’s Challenge

Andrew had left behind a school environment where the planning processes for school improvement were generally managed by a very efficient administration team. He and his colleagues were very much a part of the process and felt comfortable with the level of input and consultation. Now in his new posting to his own Remote Community School he suddenly realized that like every new venture his first challenge was to find the starting point.

He had been handed over a plan coming up for its third year, and while the existing plan had much merit he could see that there were opportunities to take it to the next level. He intended to be at his new school for the long haul, and wanted to develop a plan which would build on the work of staff and the past Principal. He also wanted to build in greater sustainability for the school and its staff and the community.

The school consisted of an enrolment of 47 children from pre-compulsory to Year 12. He had three other staff members to fill his FTE allocation. He knew one would be a Victorian Graduate and two were a husband – wife team who had been on staff for two years. He had the usual non-teaching assistants including a well informed AIEO.

Andrew also learnt that whilst some attempt had been made to engage the community there was no established plan and this was reflected in the attendance summaries for the past year.

The school was located some 200km’s from its nearest large centre and from time to time children were ‘dropped off,’ sometimes for days while parents went to town. This caused considerable disruption, and Andrew wondered what his legal responsibilities were in this regard.

To this point Andrew had not had the opportunity to gauge student achievement other than what he read in the NAPLAN records.

Andrew was very keen to make the right decisions from the outset and set up a School Improvement Plan that was manageable and produced the desired results for the children, their parents and system targets.

Given the above information consider the following:

  1. Which individuals, from the school and community, might Andrew first meet with on a one-to-one basis? Why?
  1. What format might the first morning’s whole school planning session take?
  1. Given that there will be in-school and in-community issues, how will Andrew tease these issues out and address them with his staff?
  1. What might be his and his staff’s process in developing starting points for their School Planning?
  1. Are there other stakeholders who should be included in these discussions and how will Andrew arrange for that to happen?
  1. In planning for school improvement a common trap is to over-plan in the first instance. How far should Andrew take his planning at this stage and what will his subsequent strategies be?

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