Workshop 4

An “aspirational” regional independent school strives to provide comparable student opportunities and educational outcomes to those of their metropolitan cousins. This is usually prefaced on a lower income base and with a number of other challenges as a result of distance from larger population centres.

Regional centres are subject to economic volatility at the best of times. Covid tended to focus all school leaders even more on successful and sustainable business models. In particular, regional areas were hit hard, particularly those with a significant tourism sector. Recent changes to the federal government’s recurrent funding model (DMI) also impacted aspirational regional independent schools significantly, coupled with the limits to what fee levels local communities can afford. Recruiting and retaining quality staffing, the rising cost of travel, and supply chain delays all contribute to an increasingly challenging landscape.

The two presenters lead successful independent schools in regional centres a significant distance from capital cities across two states (of 78,000 and 150,000 residents). Both schools are unique in their make-up, challenges and strategies.

In our Workshop, each presenter will use powerpoint/video to provide a brief overview of their school’s current journey and then focus on ideas, strategies and programs they are implementing to future proof their school.

In 2021 Westbourne Grammar School engaged in a collaborative and consultative process creating a comprehensive digital strategy, that combined teaching, learning, infrastructure, and the business and operations functions of our school. This innovative and systematic roadmap aims to position us at the forefront of this space over the next three years.

This workshop will focus on three main areas:

First, how our Digital Strategy was created, the process used, it’s launch, and how the strategy is being project managed, implemented, tracked, and reported against. We will share the successes of using a distributed leadership model and the structures and support mechanisms we have in place to drive this agenda.

Second, we will share how our data visualization and analytics framework sits within this strategy and how by developing this capability you have the potential to enhance every part of your school. Of particular note is how it can augment the visibility and nature of Executive and Board reporting through descriptive and predictive analytics and real-time visualization of key metrics and project status. A proof-of-concept dashboard that was created in the infancy of this work will be shared and dissected with participants.

Third, the critical importance of developing your cyber security posture as an Executive and a Board, given that the ACSC are now reporting a critical cyber incident every 8 minutes in Australia. What is your current posture? Do you have a stance? What is your current maturity level as an organization? What would you do if a critical cyber incident occurred at your school? And do you have the required protocols, processes, policies, delegations, insurance, and recovery mechanisms in place?

The workshop will conclude with a scenario of a cyber security incident that will be workshopped with participants.

Inspiring girls to become extraordinary women – undeniably a strong vision. While it had served Penrhos well, in late 2021, a year into Principal Kalea Haran’s tenure, it was time to rethink, and understand what the College needed to do to build a school for the future.

When you are a successful school, with strong academic results, you often hear – why change, don’t rock the boat. So, the goal was to find out what the community needed, what the external market was like and where does the College fit in the picture.

We had to identify and think like our stakeholders and imagine the future through research and talking to the right people.

Hear step-by-step how Penrhos re-engaged its entire community, from Pre-Kindy – Year 12 students, staff, parents and Alumni:
- build a compelling new vision and purpose,
- understand gaps,
- agree strategic enablers.

At the end of the session participants will have a model to engage their communities ensuring strategic plans are reflective of thoughts and goals of staff, students, families and partners, with tangible outcomes.

The Compassionate Systems Collective is a growing network of people, schools, and organisations committed to advancing systems change in education through an integrated focus on systems thinking, systems sensing, and social-emotional learning. We support collaboration, learning and development for schools and other organisations in the Australian context, and help to connect them to the wider innovation ecosystem for compassionate systems.

The Compassionate Systems Framework is organised around three essential components:
1. Systems thinking: developing the capability for students to use thinking tools and practices to examine how natural and man-made systems work.
2. Systems sensing: developing the capability of students to engage with diverse perspectives of real-world contexts, and work collaboratively to address complex problems and challenges.
3. Compassionate systems stance: developing the capability of students to adopt a compassionate and collaborative approach for engaging with themselves, others, and the social and natural environments in which they live.

The work of the Woodleigh Institute is grounded in relational and systems perspectives of learning. We see the development of knowledge, skills, understanding, capabilities, and meaning as being interrelated and emergent from the relationships we have with ourselves, others, and the places in which we live.
This workshop will introduce participants to the overall concept of compassionate systems thinking and some of the tools and practices that can be used by leaders to enhance their own and their teams’ abilities to manage complexity and uncertainty. In the time available participants will be invited to engage with each other and the tools and practices and also to apply these to some current issues they may be challenged by in their schools.