Nirvana+School+Project

You have been appointed, together with the rest of your team, to a leadership position in the school described in the scenario below. You have come at a vulnerable time in the school’s history. Effective leadership will be crucial. Together with your team you will need to identify the challenges the school is facing, and develop a set of strategies to effect sustained change. Some of these responses will need to be implemented quickly; others will need a longer period to develop. Where will you start? Nirvana School is situated in an outer metropolitan suburb. In a quiet side street, it is surrounded by brick houses built in the 1950’s on large blocks. It is also surrounded by a good range of public and private schools. The school itself is situated in large grounds abutting a housing estate which is still growing. Most of the staff remember with regret that not so long ago they looked across the school ovals onto farm land. The school population has been, until recently, largely Anglo-Saxon, but the new housing estate is attracting a quickly growing Vietnamese Australian community and some newly arrived migrants from Sierra Leone and Sudan. The school has been a significant part of this community for a long time. Many of its former students are pursuing business careers in the area, and it has a proud record of producing individual and team participants in state sports teams. It has maintained a reputation in the community as a ‘very good’ school with an academic as well as sporting reputation. Nevertheless, in the last few years, enrolment numbers have become an issue with a drift to the more recently built, better resourced, low fee private schools in the area. Considerable energy and time is devoted to the school newsletter which is considered an important means of communicating school successes to the community. It is managed and often almost entirely written by one of the Assistant Principals (AP’s). However, the school data does not substantiate the self congratulatory tone or the claims made in the school newsletter. Students are not performing at ‘like school’ level. Within their ‘like school group’ they are at the bottom end. Many students are clearly underachieving. While much is made of the high achieving students through celebration in the local paper and photos in the school foyer, the student and staff survey data shows that high expectations are not focused across the school. The Principal, Doug, has just retired after being the major presence in the school for the last 17 years. Open and friendly, he was an energetic presence at sports days, at the highly successful school fete, and in the words of one staff member ‘a school function would not be the same without him’. His gregarious nature made him a popular member of Rotary Lions and a sought after speaker in the local area. However in the last 3 years his presence both at school and in public has diminished as he battled a series of health issues. Both of his AP’s have retired at the same time which, while expected, has left staff feeling uneasy. The focus of school activities for the last term had been to give them all a wonderful send off.His leadership of the school has been tight and controlled. Decision making has been concentrated at the top with a team which included the two AP’s and a trusted leading teacher who is expected to take 54/11 this year. Doug had promised him a part time position for the next year or so. Anybody with an idea would speak personally with the Principal after sounding it out with one of the AP’s. Staff meetings are largely information sharing forums, the tone is friendly and communication is generally one-way. On a few remembered occasions, however, debate became acrimonious when changes were suggested to dates for the drama production and new arrangements were proposed for staff rooms. A Consultation Committee has been set up using the composition proposed in the AEU booklet. Particular staff members were cajoled into membership and it meets once a term. Data analysis and school budget issues are not yet seen as the brief of the committee. Doug embraced information technology with enthusiasm. He was one of the first to see its potential to make the school more effective. After some initial resistance both the SSO and teaching staff have integrated it into their daily school lives. School organization, particularly communication, has been enhanced considerably through the provision of laptops, an effective and ongoing training program, a well maintained Intranet and the appointment of an excellent I.T. technician. All staff are computer literate to the extent that they access (and make changes to) daily bulletins, use email to communicate with parents, and use a school modified reporting system with varying degrees of ease. The school has an excellent website. The impact of I.T. on classroom teaching and learning has yet to be evaluated, however many staff members are enthusiastically struggling with interactive white boards. The use of laptops to collect and analyze relevant school data is currently under utilized. The School Strategic Plan reflects the senior leadership team who wrote it after minimal consultation. However, staff are comfortable with what they see as general goals and vision. Anyway, considerable mistrust exists about DEECD’s directions and only the bare minimum has been done in order to satisfy increasingly demanding requirements. Two good examples of this view can be seen in data collection and the performance development area. While data has been generated and shared, this had not been used to drive strategic planning and is referred to cynically across all levels of the school. The performance and development review process had been simplified to ‘a chat with the boss’ (or one of the AP’s). Performance review focused on whether staff were managing their classrooms and ‘keeping kids quiet’, while professional development meant, if you wanted it, a day or so out of school listening to an external expert. The professional development program was run by the Principal and has been used largely for out of school, individual projects except for allocating considerable resources to the highly effective IT training. The performance and development culture has been “ticked off” as a result of a cursory staff meeting chaired by the Principal and its related data. There has been Regional concern about the school’s performance and its related data which was conveyed to Doug by the newly appointed Regional Network Leader. The lack of school interest in applying for Department funding initiatives seemed puzzling given the data. However the incredulity and hostility of his initial response gave way to assurances that he would make sure that the school was ‘in the thick of things’ in the future, and his appointment of an Initiatives Coordinator allayed concern, at least for the time being. There were clearly more pressing matters in other schools. Generally the teaching staff are reasonably happy with the school. They are well looked after with resources such as photocopiers, they are well supported by the SSO staff and they feel that the school is well managed. There are few administrative mistakes and disruption to school activities is rare. If things are a problem ‘you can go and tell the boss.’ Many of the SSO and teaching staff are engaged in extra curricular activities such as the fete, the drama production and sports events. The time and energy involved is enormous yet there is no questioning or debate about the link between staff activities and actions and the improvement of student learning. The Principal has repeatedly stated that staff involvement in extra curricula activities is crucial to community perceptions of the school. The focus on teaching and learning was largely defined as the level of noise in the classroom and the level of classroom disruption and poor behavior. Purposeful teaching was described as the skill of the teacher to keep the classroom quiet and on task. Some staff still find this a little challenging at times. However, if you were to go on a tour of the school [with one of the high achievers] things would seem in order. You would see a high level of teacher directed learning, with teachers at the front of the classroom usually sitting at desks, and students busy or at least quietly occupied by lots of handouts. What you do notice is that the reasonably dilapidated and uncared for environment of the classrooms is in marked contrast to the Administration block and the multipurpose hall which is used extensively by the community. While teachers refer to significant behavior issues in particular groups, little evidence of this is seen when walking through the school. An occasional child walking with note in hand towards the Administration block and a few stern words outside a couple of classrooms seems to be the sum of it. But staff feels that discipline is a major issue since the new arrivals from the housing estates changed the feel of the school.
 * CASE STUDY – Nirvana School**

In general they do not feel the same level of respect exists towards them from students or parents as in years gone by. However, with a couple of exceptions, they are usually happy with the views and level of support they have received from the administration. In general, issues deemed serious by the classroom teacher, or the rare incident in the yard, were handled by the AP’s and the Principal. Advice on options for other educational settings was the response to disruptive behavior which was not resolved with some stern ‘heart to hearts’ and meetings with parents. Useful school data on the matter has yet to be effectively addressed. Staffs are positive about many aspects of the school including their own performance. Again, the data does not back that view. Student and community surveys indicate a lack of connectedness by students. 50% of the staff are aged greater than 45, there are no new graduates and, in the last 4 years there have been 4 transfers of experienced staff into the school. Given this history everyone felt that there was no need for anything more than a ‘chat or two with the boss’ to induct the new staff into the school. Meetings of teachers generally focus on management of resources and behavioral issues. Passionate debate usually erupts at the end of the year and focuses on the selection of text books and classrooms supplies. Each area of the school seems to be a little fiefdom with staff teaching in the same area year after year. Good natured banter exists between groups about the worth of each other but that seems the limit of curriculum or pedagogical discussion on the whole. A small group of staff are interested in developing ideas and practice but that is generally limited to their own classrooms. These teachers have shown leadership in trying to get curriculum discussion going, but with limited success. Such discussions have been greeted with passivity rather than hostility, and the busy daily school life has overwhelmed them. Meanwhile all the teaching staff feel comfortable that what they are doing is still valued by the community as parent teacher evenings are enviably well attended. The school is aware of, but is yet to see as concerning, the growing number of students who are leaving to attend other schools in the area after their first year at the school. No survey has been done to establish the reason, but anecdotal evidence suggests dissatisfaction with the capacity of the school to engage students who are not academically or sports inclined. On the other hand, kids who are talented in sport enjoy the facilities and the attention of an extremely hard working and exacting sports department (an emphasis on elite sport is reflected in the ethos of local sports clubs as well and much less energy is spent on encouraging and supporting the average kid’s interest in sport). Highly achieving students find the classroom too easy and, surprisingly for the staff, are showing up in the truancy rates which are high. The students of migrant background are expected to just fit in and be part of the school and were not to be treated differently but it is clear that they bring different experiences and capacities. This has led to concerns but no solutions.