• CaSPA Constitution has been finalised and published in this newsletter and on the CaSPA website.
• CaSPA sent a submission to Australian Law Reform Commission regarding the Religious Discrimination Legislation.
• Australian Catholic University Principal Well-being Update was distributed to the State and Territory Secondary Principals Associations. 2022 Report to be distributed soon.
• Attended an online meeting with ACARA Stakeholders.

Name: Simon Vaughan

Current School: St Stephen’s Catholic College, Mareeba

Previous Position & School: Deputy Principal

Year of Birth: 1979

The hope for my current school is: to be the best school in FNQ

The Joy of Principalship is: being across all aspects of the school

A Book I would recommend: Criconomics

Fun Fact about me: Lived in Brisbane the majority of my life but born in Sydney – Go Blues!

My valued Well-Being Strategy: Make time for family

Advice for an aspiring Principal: Work life balance is key

Inspiring Leadership Quote: “Sweat the Small stuff”

What Title would you give to your TED Talk or Book: I’ll reserve this until I’m more into my Principalship.

CaSPA Beginning Principal Profile

Name: Giselle Talbot

Current School: Marist College Bendigo

Previous Position & School: Marist College Bendigo, Deputy Principal: Community.  Before that Catholic College Bendigo: DP Staff

Year of Birth:  1971

The hope for my current school is: to continue to build a community where the Marist charism is authentically lived out and celebrated each day.

The Joy of Principalship is: witnessing and harnessing the power of the village.

A Book I would recommend: Faith by Tim Costello

Fun Fact about me: I have lived in 4 countries.

My valued Well-Being Strategy: Meditation and exercise

Advice for an aspiring Principal: Ask for help when needed…every day if needs be.

Inspiring Leadership Quote: Mary MacKillop: never see a need without doing something about it.

What Title would you give to your TED Talk or Book: Listen and then Lead.

 

CaSPA Beginning Principal Profile

Name: Ms Sharon Rainford

Current School: St Norbert College, Queens Park WA

Previous Position & School: St Norbert College, Queens Park WA

Year of Birth: 1965

The hope for my current school is:  To produce good people

The Joy of Principalship is: the energy and achievements of the students

A Book I would recommend: Go Forth, Pope Francis

Fun Fact about me: I was on P plates when I started teaching!

My valued Well-Being Strategy: No work emails on my phone

Advice for an aspiring Principal: “Is it nice or necessary?”

Inspiring Leadership Quote: The higher you rise, the more you should serve

What Title would you give to your TED Talk or Book: From Prac Teacher to Principal-what not to forget!

 

CaSPA Beginning Principal Profile

Name: Danny Crump                                                 

Current School: Stuartholme School

Previous Position & School: Deputy Principal, Stuartholme School

Year of Birth: 1979

The hope for my current school is: To create a bold and transformational future focused narrative that allows our young people to flourish and achieve their best to make a positive and influential impact well beyond the gates of the school.

The Joy of Principalship is: Connecting and supporting people on their journey – students, staff, and families, so they have the opportunity to be their very best.

A Book I would recommend: Think Again – Adam Grant and The Thursday Murder Club for some light reading!

Fun Fact about me: I am a passionate music teacher and still take the choir and Year 7 Music classes.

My valued Well-Being Strategy: Putting in boundaries and being intentional through booking into my schedule gym, mindfulness, and key family time that cannot be touched.

Advice for an aspiring Principal: Actively seek out networks of support and never be shy in reaching out for assistance.

Inspiring Leadership Quote: ‘Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.’ – Barack Obama

What Title would you give to your TED Talk or Book: Educating the hand, heart and mind – celebrating the impact of educators in transforming lives.

byMARK BOWLING

 20 March 2023

Guiding principal: Dan McMahon says “There are more angry people in society".

“THE job is certainly getting much harder,” school principal Dan McMahon says, reflecting on research that shows increasing levels of violence in schools, and with half of all school leaders at risk of serious mental health concerns including burnout and stress.

After a career in teaching, and still sprightly at 65, Mr McMahon, president of the Queensland Catholic Secondary Principals’ Association, sees the growing challenges of being a school leader, including threats of violence, with more than a quarter of the state’s school principals at risk of being physically attacked, and a third at risk of bullying.

It is parents who are often the perpetrators.

“There are more angry people in society,”Mr McMahon said.  

“This may have been exacerbated by experiences of COVID-19.  It is not uncommon for parents to ‘vent’ at school personnel.  

“Sadly, it is often staff at school reception who bear the initial brunt of that before it gets to the principal.

Escalating threats and violence, punishing workloads and chronic staff shortages have hit school principals hard with an alarming 47.8 per cent triggering “red flag” alerts in 2022, according to the latest annual Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey conducted by Australian Catholic University.

“I would be among many of my colleagues who experience significant sleepless sessions at night wrestling with and re-living issues from the days before or the days to come,” Mr McMahon said.

“The litigious nature of the society in which we live would never be far from the minds of most principals.”

Mr McMahon said school leaders have to deal with significantly more compliance issues.

“Systems are very conscious of their legal responsibilities and principals are then responsible for ensuring that compliance, in so many fields, is expertly done,” he said.  

“Principals are very aware of the personal, professional and financial costs for us if we get aspects of compliance wrong.”

Figures compiled by the ACU’s Institute for Positive Psychology and Education (IPPE) for the latest annual survey of 2500 Australian principals reveal “red flag” alerts jumped by 18.7 percentage points last year – a 64.26 per cent increase.

Workloads and teacher shortages: Principals are planning to quit says ACU lecturer Paul Kidson, an investigator behind the survey.

Red flag alert emails are triggered when school leaders are at risk of self-harm, occupational health problems or serious impact on their quality of life. The emails alert principals to contact employee support services.

Offensive behaviours towards principals have also escalated in the past year with 44 per cent of principals subjected to physical violence – the highest figure recorded since the survey started in 2011.

“Schools are dealing with many more issues of young people and families who suffer deficits long before they reach the school gate,” Mr McMahon said. He started teaching Year 6 at St Mary’s Dalby in 1978, and since 1992 has lead school communities across Queensland,  including Shalom Catholic College, Bundaberg since 2009.  

“Some young people come to school angry and some parents come to school angry.  We work hard with a wide range of difficulties experienced in families – as we should.  

“Regrettably, for principals, this often takes us away from our core job of leading Teaching and Learning.”

In all his years in Queensland Catholic schools, Mr McMahon said he had not personally experienced physical violence, but was “very aware” of colleagues who had endured attacks.

“Sadly, we are now provided training in how to effectively and appropriately restrain young people should such situations arise,” he said.

Mr McMahon has experienced cyber bullying and describes it as “awful”.

“When folks hide behind anonymity and a keyboard and disparage people or a school, that is a whole other world of hurt,” he said. 

“Many of us have been actively defamed on social media.  But so have the young people in our schools as well.  

“Sadly, it is a very real and very obvious negative to a world so intertwined on social media.”

 The latest ACU report follows the release of early survey findings that show heavy workloads, lack of time and teacher shortages were driving school principals towards resignation and early retirement, with the number of principals wanting to quit or retire early tripling.

The latest ACU survey reveals growing challenges in schools.

“It is so much harder now to staff our schools,” Mr McMahon said.  

“Governments are now scrambling to respond to this crisis but this shortage has been a very evident problem in the making for years.  

“More principals are filling gaps in classrooms and doing playground duties and anything else necessary to keep things going.”

In dealing with burnout and stress, Mr McMahon said he is “grateful for strong ‘circles of support’ from trusted colleagues and family.

He described leading a school community as a huge responsibility and an increasing challenge, yet a wonderful opportunity.  

“For worse or better, in a Catholic school, principals are the front face of the Catholic Church as well,” Mr McMahon said. 

“Families are connecting with Gospel message through their interaction with their child’s school rather than the parish.” (Source: The Catholic Leader)

Experts question latest NAPLAN changes.

A new era of NAPLAN testing began this week, with the tests held earlier in the year and student results simplified.

While the changes have been received positively by most education stakeholders, some experts have raised concerns.

CQ University education expert Professor Ken Purnell warned that by replacing the previous 10 achievement bands with just four, NAPLAN’s previous “finer granularity” will be lost.

“The 2023 proficiency standard requires a higher level of achievement than the previous national minimum standard. Thus, there is a lack of comparability of 2023 and future NAPLAN data with previous years,” Purnell explained.

“More students will fall below the proficient standard. Estimates are that those in the lowest category will rise from the previous 7.3 per cent of students to over 10 per cent. Around 30 per cent of students are likely not to meet proficiency.

“Thus, a lot of students and parents will be concerned about the results and potentially this will contribute to mental health issues and an ongoing sense of failure at school work.”

Purnell said it is time to rethink NAPLAN and find a better way to support teachers and students.

“I would prefer NAPLAN resources be used on enhancing the teaching workforce for the benefit of the achievements and wellness – including mental health – for all Australian students,” he said.

“It’s time to rethink what we do and how to champion the professionalism of our teachers, as is done in high-performing countries in international tests.”

As well as changing the date and reporting structure of NAPLAN, ACARA has changed the triennial opt-in National Assessment Plan (NAP) program to an annual model, with Science to be introduced in 2024, Civics and Citizenship in 2025 and Digital Literacy in 2026.

Purnell questioned whether an opt-in model can provide representative data for an entire cohort.

“There is a strong argument to make the burden of NAPLAN less, not more, with NAP added. And for resources being ‘wasted’ annually to get the same results in each jurisdiction – some argue strongly that such human and financial resources could be better used to improve student achievements and wellness than testing them annually. 

“There is, of course, the unfortunate spin-off where NAPLAN results have taken on far more of a high-stakes nature, with jobs and promotions sometimes dependent on seeing improvements. That is very stressful and unnecessarily adds to already overworked school educators.”

Senior lecturer in education at Charles Darwin University, Dr Sue Smith, said that NAPLAN is still not fair to many students.

“One of the saddest moments of my education career was being in a very remote primary school the day that the NAPLAN results were published. A Year 3 class and their teacher were gutted,” Smith said.

“The standardised NAPLAN approach assumes that all students share equal engagement with Standard Australian English (SAE) and have equal access to reliable ICT for everyday learning and for the test.

“We know that these factors are not true for low SES students and English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EALD) students, and with remote and very remote Indigenous students these disparities are even more pronounced.”

Smith said that many Indigenous students might speak five or six languages and only engage with SAE at school.

“This is a lot of language information, coding and understanding for a little Year 3 (8 or 9 years) to process and reproduce,” she said.

“Even at 12 and 15 years it is clearly a daunting task, and little wonder that proficiency is the exception rather than the rule.

“The test does not capture, or seemingly not even value, the literacy and numeracy skills development that are embedded in arts, music, dance, sports and learning in the natural environment. Teachers routinely hold assessments of these, but the test does not.”

Some experts have also raised concerns about the new testing timeline.

Monash University lecturer Dr Venesser Fernandes warned that bringing forward NAPLAN testing to March has “new pitfalls” for students.

“In week six or seven of Term 1, students will not have been introduced to various concepts taught at their year levels,” Fernandes said.

“For example, a Grade 3 test would in effect, only determine mastery and understanding of content from Grade 3 with allowances made that in its online adaptive mode, students will be tested at their current ability level.

“And with the test results unavailable until July 2023, the only opportunity that schools can use to optimise the results is in the scheduled Term 3 three-way conferences that are held for students, parents and teachers.”

Fernandes argued that NAPLAN testing should be pushed back further in the year, not brought forward, to allow students the time to get to grips with the year's curricular content.

"The results will then correlate with reports being prepared by their teachers on students’ progress over the year and provide their next year level teachers with enough of data to be able to work on tailoring their learning programs for the start of the next school year," she said.

(Source: EducationHQ)