Visible Learning Study Tour

Mrs Walton, Mr Gillespie, Mrs Joyce, Mrs McArthur and I were fortunate enough to spend the first 3 days of this week observing and learning from some of the best Visible Learning Schools and Colleges in Auckland, New Zealand.  We spent a considerable amount of time at Stonefields School, the school that John Hattie uses to record the majority of the videos that support his work in Visible Learning.  In addition we visited Selwyn College (Years 9-13), Ormiston Senior College (Years 11-13), Clevedon Primary School (Year 0 – 6) and New Market School (Year 1-6).  To say that this visit was inspirational would be an understatement.  We saw great facilities, kids, teachers, ideas and principals, though most important of all, we saw exceptional learning and the structures that support this being consistently implemented across individual schools.  We also saw how students who have experienced both Stonefields and then Selwyn, could articulate their knowledge of the learning process, as well as identify their capacity to progress at a far greater rate than their peers, even though they had less content knowledge in comparison when they began their high schooling experience. This was because they knew how to learn – what to do when you don’t know what to do.

This leads to the real learning for our study tour – How can we organise and conceptualise our College so that maximum energy is invested in “causing learning” for our students whilst minimising the energy spent on other items? As an educational system we are constantly being bombarded with additional things to teach and do, though we were very reflective and identified that always prioritising what “causes learning”, although sounding obvious, is our number one take away.  In addition we have much discussion about the development of “The Learning Package”, which will outline both the learning dispositions and the learning process that students need when they are stuck.  We will also be continuing our work of refocusing our use of the curriculum, and the way in which we work to ensure we are best meeting the needs of individual students. In short, these are:

“Causing Learning”

• Delivering and implementing “The Learning Package” including the Learning Dispositions, the Learning Process and the Learning Pit.
• Uncomplicate the curriculum to clarify for teachers the priority areas and the “curriculum entitlement” for our students
• Changing our ways of working to best meet the learning needs of students in our classes

As discovered in our visit to Auckland to this week, we must be mindful that it takes considerable focus and time to deeply en-grain visible learning into the culture of the College.  The schools we visited have been on this journey for 8 years or longer, though we are well underway with the work that our staff are already doing in classrooms.  I must make a mention of thanks and recognition to the executive leadership team and Catherine Kimmorley from Toowoomba Catholic Schools Office who created the opportunity for this amazing learning experience which will have considerable impact on the learning of our students well into the future! There are more exciting times ahead as we continue on our journey of continual renewal.

NAPLAN Data Release

We have seen the next release of NAPLAN Data and are eagerly awaiting the arrival of individual student NAPLAN reports so that we may forward these to parents.  I will be collating some of the data to share, though we are impressed with much of our improvement in 2019.  We have met many of our long term NAPLAN goals, and are very pleased to report that over two thirds (yes that’s more than 2 out of every 3 students) of year 3 students have achieved in the upper 2 bands and no children in year 3 are under the National Minimum Standard (NMS) for Reading, Grammar and Punctuation, or Numeracy.  This is an excellent achievement which all of our students, parents and especially staff should be very proud of.  Well done everyone!

Peter Cuskelly

Principal