EOI Cohort 12

Cohort 4 has commenced

The schools who now comprise cohort 4 commenced EDvance on February 13 and have now completed their first three days of professional learning workshops.

After day 1 an evening of Lawn Bowls helped participants to further develop relationships across schools in the cohort and was very well attended. They have also shown great enthusiasm for the professional readings and evidence-based research and have begun reflecting on the implications for their own school data sets.

The EDvance Mentors have also been getting to know their new schools there have been many meeting dates set between now and the end of term 1, as schools are beginning to develop their FED Performance Placements.

We welcome the following schools to C4:

Welcome Georgie Wynne
EDvance Program Development Lead

Georgie has recently commenced as the new Program Development Lead with Fogarty EDvance. She has been involved in the education sector as a teacher, leader and consultant with experience across WA, NT and NSW in both government and catholic schools and at systems level. Her specialty areas are teacher and leadership development, team building, teaching and learning and student engagement.  Most weekends you will find her out on the golf course perfecting her swing.

Georgie’s focus will be in developing the EDvance program beyond the Perth metro area, to ensure that low SES schools across Western Australia have access and support to EDvance to transform their school communities to achieve better student outcomes. Her work will also involve developing some more tailored approaches to working with schools in regional contexts.

The Trends in Internat­ional Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), conducted every 4 years, measures student achievement in maths and science at Year 4 and Year 8 in Australia and many other countries. TIMSS assesses 630,000 students across 49 countries in Year 4 and in 39 countries in Year 8.

The recently released TIMSS results reveal little change in Australian students’ achievement since 1995.

These alarming results have sparked calls from education commentators for Australia to “wake up’’, reject short-term fixes, raise the effectiveness of teaching, and improve retention and training of qualified maths and science teachers. Further, Australia has had little success in closing equity gaps between students from indigenous and non-indigenous backgrounds and lower and higher socio-economic backgrounds.

During this same period (1995-2015), other high-performing countries such as Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei and Japan have made steady improvements. Other countries including Canada, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, the US and Kazakhstan have improved and now outperform Australia.

TIMSS shows that Australian Year 4 students are significantly outperformed by students in 21 countries in mathematics and 17 countries in science. Year 8 students are outperformed by those in 12 countries in mathematics and 14 in science.

Commentators say that this is a national challenge that requires a national response. We need Australia to take urgent action to access this decline in academic outcomes and the answer is not to just do more of the same.

EDvance program results show that educational inequality CAN be addressed at a whole school and a state wide level.

Fogarty EDvance is a 3 year whole school improvement program for school leaders in disadvantaged communities. The program works with school executive teams to help them transform student outcomes in their schools by providing them with best practice tools and research, rich data sets, ex-principal mentors and peer support. Over the 3 years schools turn theory into action by designing and implementing strategies that fit their unique school context.

We believe that by improving the quality of leadership in schools we can enable high quality teaching, enhance parent and community support for the school and achieve our fundamental aim: an Australia where all children, regardless of background, attain an excellent education.

Congratulations to the people from Fogarty EDvance Schools who were announced as winners at the WA Education Awards ceremony this week. Great schools are made by great leaders and great teachers and the kids are the winners on every occasion. Well done everyone.

Mark McClements, Challis Community Primary School – WA Beginning Teacher of the Year

After a dream career with the world-famous Arsenal Football Club, Mark McClements found his calling to become a teacher and his impact on the school has been remarkable. With limitless enthusiasm and creativity, he takes a hands-on approach to teaching. He introduced a new program to the school, Talking for Writing, which is getting results – 84 per cent of Year 3 students achieved above the national minimum standard in the 2015 NAPLAN results.

Jodie Schicker, Bungaree Primary School – WA Premier’s Primary Teacher of the Year

Jodie Schicker teaches her students that circumstance does not define who they are or what they do; it is their choices that matter in life. She inspires a curiosity in her students, sharing her love of science. Mrs Schicker supports students to succeed, encouraging them to achieve their goals and be responsible for their learning. She has also spearheaded changes to improve how students with autism move on to secondary school, and how the school and parents manage challenging behaviours.

Congratulations also go to:

On Tuesday 6th of September, the FED Team, members of the FED Collective and a senior representative of the Macquarie Foundation, visited Phoenix Primary School as part of the school engagement offered to supporters of the EDvance program.

Margaret Pretty, Principal of Phoenix Primary, shared her experiences and growth as part of the FED program. There was also the chance to see one of Phoenix’s major improvement initiatives in action, with a visit to the early childhood centre to see the Kindergarten children developing early literacy skills.

Phoenix is a small primary school, with over 40% of students with English a second language. One of Phoenix’s key focuses as part of their 3-year school improvement has been to improve student literacy. To improve student achievement Phoenix has implemented a whole-school literacy approach, including a formal, game-based synthetic phonetics program in the Kindergarten classes, Cracking the Code.

The FED Collective and supporters were fortunate to meet Chrissy Kelly, co-author of the Cracking the Code program, who shared some insights into the significant improvements seen with the program in early years language development. Phoenix have already seen excellent improvements in the readiness of their Kindergarten children and they expect an improvement in on-entry assessments from next year. Through the broader whole-school approaches to literacy and numeracy, Phoenix are setting the conditions for improvements in all areas of NAPLAN in future years.

Research confirms synthetic phonics is an essential element of early primary literacy programs. The synthetic phonics approach has children practice ‘synthesising’ the sounds, identifying sounds and blending them together and breaking words down into their sounds. In pre-primary through to year 3, Phoenix Primary students’ continue their synthetic phonics approach through the program ‘Letters and Sounds’.

The FED Collective and supporters school visit is always a highlight in the FED calendar. The team and schools appreciate the opportunity to show supporters the impact the Fogarty EDvance Program and the improved student outcomes that the program drives towards. Our congratulations to Margaret and the team at Phoenix Primary School.