How inquiry and engagement lead to school improvement
From an inner-city primary school to a remote Aṉangu community, schools across South Australia are finding their own paths to improvement. At a primary school in Adelaide's inner west, students became co-designers of their own mathematics learning — and achievement followed. In a remote Aṉangu community, a pottery program shaped by Elders and students has become a space of creativity, cultural continuity and genuine aspiration. At a high school in outback South Australia, embedding daily rituals of connection reduced behavioural incidents and gave belonging a place in the timetable.
These stories are distinct in context and in what they set out to achieve. But they share a common thread in the kind of leadership that made them possible.
Beyond knowledge transfer
High-quality leadership education can create capacity for inquiry: the ability to look carefully at a specific community, understand what the evidence is saying in context, and design a response that is genuine rather than pre-packaged. It also builds something harder to measure, the disposition to engage others in that process, to share decision-making, and to stay curious when change is slow or uncertain.
This is the kind of learning that moves from individual insight to broad change.
Activating the levers that matter
Our strategy for public education in South Australia identifies partnering with families and communities, engaging children and young people, empowered leadership and effective teaching as the levers most likely to drive lasting improvement. The challenge that follows is building the leadership capacity to activate them simultaneously, in real communities, with real constraints.
- At Allenby Gardens Primary School, leaders identified an opportunity to raise the ceiling on mathematical learning. They invited students into the conversation first. Students articulated a clear appetite for more complex tasks and more space to think. Teachers responded by redesigning learning experiences collaboratively, with students as co-designers and evaluators. The outcome — growth in both achievement and learner agency — reflects what happens when effective teaching and genuine student voice operate together.
- At Lockleys North Primary School, leaders questioned whether existing measures of success were capturing what mattered most. They sought to define, “what does success look like for learners here?” and developed the answer with staff, students and families. Six Learner Qualities now underpin daily practice, with wellbeing and engagement data reaching high levels across the school.
- At Peterborough High School, leaders saw that relationships and belonging needed to come first. Practices like daily Sunshine Gatherings and Circle Time are now embedded in school life, resulting in a 43% reduction in behavioural incidents and improved attendance.
- At Murputja Aṉangu School, leaders sought to bring community knowledge and identity into the centre of learning. A pottery program shaped through community dialogue and Elder knowledge has created something education systems often aspire to: deep cultural connection woven into, not alongside, formal learning.
What this kind of learning builds
The outcomes and contexts look different. However, what these sites share is a disposition for learning, where leaders and communities lean into inquiry, engage honestly, and stay committed even when the path isn't clear.
These dispositions are developed in relation to a specific community and its learners, not in the abstract. The leaders in these stories didn't acquire a solution and apply it. They developed the capacity to find one that fit.
Lead the change
After four successful years supporting leaders and leadership teams across South Australia, places in the final Leading Future Learning cohort - commencing Week 6, Term 2, 2026 - are now open. Don’t miss your final chance to be a part of this program.