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Video transcript

Hi. My name's Adam Wilson, I'm the proud principal of Stirling North Primary School, where we focus on wellbeing and learner agency.

I'd love to show you what we do.

Let's go.

Student agency is one of the most important things we need to go after in education.

Everyone likes being involved in the process of learning, and so we want to involve our students and our teachers in that process to be engaged in their learning, have a say in what's happening, How this plays out with our junior primary is students have a focus, every single time they do it, the teacher sets that focus with students and they go and demonstrate that through their play-based approach.

What was our learning intention this morning?

Collaboration.

When students play, there's always a focus and it's generally around a person's social capability.

So, them being able to explain why they're doing something, work well with others is fantastic.

It’s making people join you in your play.

I think agency is really important in anything we do.

And so, for us, involving kids in what they want to learn and how they want to present it, we find that the engagement levels are through the roof.

Some of the data we're really proud of is 25% increase in enrolments.

2% increase in attendance.

54% reduction in behaviour.

And we've scored higher in the state average in the last five years in school connectedness and school belonging.

Some of our higher end agency parts is where we get community in.

We've worked with a local business in producing green cement in Port Augusta that provide us with three problems, and our students get to solve those problems using a variety of ways, and it's up to them on which problem they want to solve and how they want to solve it.

Who was looking at grinding a sand to a powder?

Who had that as their problem.

To make concrete, it uses a lot of CO2 and there's this ash that can lower the production of CO2 and they need to turn it into powder so that they can use it for that concrete matrix.

Are you enjoying your projects, guys?

Yeeeeah!

It's not teaching to the test, It's basically posing a problem, and you show me all the creative ways that you're going to be able to solve it.

It's important because students take ownership of what they're learning and they're so engaged in what they're doing.

So when the kids want to learn and are engaged, it takes away any form of behaviour and they're just so into it and having those real-life experiences and being able to apply that into the classroom just takes it up that level.

What makes this so rewarding for me is being able to see students come full circle, so, providing them with the information and then them taking the understanding and applying that to really come through and solve a problem that's really complex.

I love this form of learning.

I think we're bringing fun to school by involving in the community, having them have a say in what's happening, thinking outside the square.

It's fun and exciting, but it sets kids up for what they're going to be in the future.

End of transcript.

Go back to our strategy for public education in South Australia