Latest Impact Report celebrates Cohort 5

Congratulations to the nineteen Cohort 5 primary and secondary schools who recently celebrated the launch of their Fogarty EDvance School Improvement Program Impact Report. Included in the report are nineteen individual stories of impact, capturing how the Fogarty EDvance School Improvement Program supported them in building the capacity of their school leadership teams with the goal of transforming educational outcomes for their students. 

The leadership teams from Cohort 5 began their school improvements journeys in 2018. The Cohort consisted of nineteen schools, ten of which were from regional areas including the Pilbara, South-West and the Wheatbelt. This represented the first intake of regional schools into the Fogarty EDvance program, providing the schools with access to onsite school visits from mentors, professional development opportunities in regional areas, and regular trips to Perth for workshops and leadership collaboration, and included access to EDvance Teaching Intensives and the Secondary Teacher Leader program. 

Georgie Wynne, Fogarty EDvance Program Director, said it was a pleasure working with the leadership teams from Cohort 5, supporting them as they bravely embraced the challenge of undertaking whole-school transformation for the benefit of students in their communities. 

“Over the past 3 years the Cohort 5 schools have worked with evidence-based research and best practice tools from both education and business, they have created and responded to rich data sets, and they have been supported by outstanding mentors and their cohort of peers, to turn theory into action.”

“Every school has seen growth in outcomes for their students from improved academic performance, to increased social and emotional wellbeing, improved attendance and classroom engagement.” 

“As a result of their sustained commitment and hard work, every school has seen improvements in academic and social outcomes for their students, with sixty percent of schools in the cohort, reporting significant improvements in student outcomes.”

Louise O’Donovan, Principal at Beeliar Primary School and  2021 Primary Principal of the Year, thanked the Fogarty Foundation and the EDvance team for their exceptional commitment to supporting schools through their improvement journeys.

The Fogarty Foundation initiated the Fogarty EDvance School Improvement Program to significantly improve and sustain academic outcomes of students in disadvantaged communities in Western Australia. Each school starts the EDvance program at a different stage of student performance. Our aspiration is to see all Fogarty EDvance schools reach, or exceed, the state average for their students. When students from challenging backgrounds perform strongly, we demonstrate to our community that it is possible to achieve excellent teaching and learning for every student in the state, regardless of their postcode.

To date, EDvance has worked with 111 schools over 8 cohorts, involving over 350 school leaders and impacting more than 50,000 students across WA.

• Cohort 8 launched in 2021 and we now have 29 regional schools in the network, from the Pilbara to the South-West of WA. 
• The schools in Cohort 5 have all shown improvements in social and/or academic outcomes for their students with around 60% of schools attaining significant improvements in academic results for their students. 
• Fogarty EDvance and the Fogarty Foundation are trialling innovative approaches to support high-impact teaching practices in schools. Initial results are impressive.

We welcome you to download a copy of the Impact Report for Cohort 5.