Designing for the future

Through contributing to the design of our School's strategic plan I can have an input to the  direction of our school. This year we had the added influence of a Learning consultant in Rob Clarke from Learning Architects.

We further developed our understanding of STEAM in our school and added a focused Science component to meet the needs of our students and a staff member who will be returning from a Science scholarship.

We are able to incorporate some key learnings form previous years such as:

• Being realistic in designing the plan so it is achievable. 
• Being ambitious in the quality of projects - aiming high. 
• Spreading the load - getting others involved is key to developing leadership and capabilities. 
• Considering timelines, especially where there are other events happening at school that might have an impact. 
• Linking our strategic plan to our school visions and culture. 
• Exploring what is happening in other schools, both locally and internationally. 
• Leaning on the strengths of staff and community to help make projects successful. 

As we have developed the Strategic plans over the last few years we have deliberately focused on the teaching and learning more and have left the infrastructure and hardware as a separate entity for the IT leadership staff to work on away from teachers and students. This has enabled more teachers who felt burdened by being involved in IT meetings where they jargon was intimidating to be more involved in the part that is really important to them - the teaching and learning.