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In August, Korowa Anglican Girls School won the School Notices Oz Award for Secondary School of the Year – Non-government. The accolade adds to an impressive list of outcomes for the school, including its VCE results, which consistently place it in the top band of schools across the state.
Last year, 10% of the school’s students ranked in the top 1% of the state with an ATAR of 99 or above, while 42% ranked in the top 5% of the state with an ATAR of 95 or above.
“Our strengths in teaching and learning come down to a relentless focus on excellence and personal best achieved through a commitment to constant improvement,” the school’s principal, Helen Carmody, told The Educator.
“We have an evidenced based approach to everything we do so that we track our students and their learning. We rely on feedback to evaluate our performance against our goal of achieving one year’s growth for one year’s teaching.”
Carmody said the school also makes use of expert theory and classroom practice so that it focuses on what makes a tangible difference to teaching and learning outcomes.
‘Concept based curriculum’ addresses challenges
Carmody said a key challenge for principals is the growing numbers of young people and adolescents whose lives are adversely affected by their struggle with mental health and wellbeing.
“The data indicates that our young people are suffering now more than ever before and many at a younger age than we have previously seen,” Carmody said.
“I can only see these pressures intensifying in the year ahead and we all have to take measures to respond to this current crisis.”
With these challenges in mind, the school has undertaken and comprehensive review of its approach to pastoral care and wellbeing programs.
In 2017 the Korowa Wellbeing Curriculum and Safe School Framework was introduced as a “concept-based curriculum”. Carmody said this is related to the “core essential elements” of emotional intelligence, positive psychology, cognitive control, health and personal safety, leadership and whole being.
“At the same time we have been working on the integration of the domains of neural resilience, which are vision, composure, reasoning, health, tenacity; and collaboration,” Carmody said.
“We are currently working on the integration of this framework into all existing programs but specifically our experiential learning programs.”
Expanding school networks
Carmody said the school will be working with the Positivity Institute and using the Mental Toughness Questionnaire to track and gather evidence on the impact of its experiential programs in relation to the 4C’s (control, commitment, challenge and confidence) of mental toughness.
“Our second project will be the development of an interactive web based dashboard for students to enter and track their data in relation to vision and goal setting and particularly track the health aspects of resilience through sleep, exercise and nutrition,” she said.
Carmody said the third project that her school has planned for 2019 is related to its long term aim of establishing an alliance network with schools across sectors and across Australia to focus on an evidenced based approach to the improvement of all aspects of schooling.
The year ahead looks promising for the school, which is seeing its strongest enrolments and financial performance in years.
“The use of data and learning analysis means we know our girls and our school well,” Carmody said.
“We are continually introducing new initiatives for girls, driven by the input of the girls and their families as well as evidence and trends from the education sector and wider industry.”