3 November 2026

Each year the Public Education Awards recognise the vital role our people and communities play in helping children and young people to learn and thrive. In this episode of Teach, you’ll meet the 2026 finalists for the Excellence in Learner Agency Award – Largs North Kindergarten, Stansbury Primary School, and Charles Campbell College. This award recognises people and systems that empower our learners to develop a sense of identity and responsibility by involving them in actively co-creating their learning.

Show Notes

Established in 2011, the Public Education Awards recognise the vital role our people and communities play in helping children and young people to learn and thrive. The Awards recognise excellence across every role in public education, including educators, leaders, support staff and employees working in corporate teams across the department.

Excellence in Learner Agency: This award recognises people and systems that empower our learners to develop a sense of identity and responsibility by embedding structures and processes to involve them in actively co-creating learning and by enabling them to exercise their agency in their site and broader community.

About the Public Education Awards

Public Education Awards – 2026 finalists

The 2026 Public Education Awards ceremony will be held on 27 November 2026.

Transcript

Dale Atkinson: Hello, and welcome to the Teach – a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education, and today we are talking about excellence in learner agency, which is one of the award categories within the Public Education Awards. This award recognises people and systems that empower our learners to develop a sense of identity and responsibility by embedding structures and processes to involve them in actively co-creating learning and by enabling them to exercise their agency in their site and their broader community.

And today, we're joined by three fabulous women. We've got Amy Watson, who's the preschool director at Largs North Kindergarten. G'day, Amy. How are you?

Amy Watson: I'm good, thank you. How are you?

Dale Atkinson: Very well, thank you. We have Amanda Narroway, who's the principal at Stansbury Primary School. Hello, Amanda.

Amanda Narroway: [Hi] Dale.

Dale Atkinson: And Rachael Savage, who's the SACE, VET and Pathways Leader at Charles Campbell College. Rachael, welcome.

Rachael Savage: Thank you very much for having me.

Dale Atkinson: Now, we might throw first to you, Amy. You've got the littlest learners with us. Can you, can you tell us a bit about what learner agency means at your, at your kindergarten?

Amy Watson: Learner agency at our kindergarten is often referred to as a happy hub. So it's an environment where you can feel, hear, and see the learning endeavours by our children. It's where children take ownership of their learning and their success and progress, and they make choices for learning that is, drives their engagement but is supported by their interests and strengths and growing desires.

Dale Atkinson: Tell us a bit about Largs North Kindergarten. What sort of cohort of kids have you got out there?

Amy Watson: So we're a metropolitan beachside standalone kindergarten, so we have a bit of a secretive location, which often families don't know where we are. But I have 55 learners in our location, and currently we're celebrating 70 years of education in the community this year. So a long-standing site, which is great.

Dale Atkinson: That is great. Now, how do you go about engaging, three, four, five-year-olds in their learning? What does that look like in a practical sense for you guys?

Amy Watson: I'm not sure, like, how often you talk to a four-year-old about what they know, but they're pretty cool little humans about knowing what they can do, and they definitely have big dreams.

So one part of our QIP this year has been exploring with children about making personal learning goals. So sitting and talking with children about what they can do, but also if they notice things that they find a little bit tricky it might be a growing point for them. So what has been really cool is we've done a whole heap of group goals with our children about succeeding things together as a community which has been really great 'cause children celebrate each other, but they also become leaders in learning for others if this is a strong skill set for them.

And what we've noticed is that the engagement in learning has been really deep and they come really invested. But children are also really honest about what they struggle with, what they can't do yet. So some of our children, one little boy couldn't use a sticky tape dispenser, which was making it really hard for him to write letters to his friends and family. So he said to me, "I find that really tricky. I want to make that my goal." And he actually had peers around him support him to help him to be able to do that skill, 'cause that was a strong skill for others. And then he supported other people in the learning environment with their goals at the same time. So it's around that community of learning, and what we've noticed is children have a much stronger understanding for diversity and inclusion in learning. So they might be able to articulate what they're really strong at and what they can't do yet, but they can notice that in others as well and be that really great support for other children, which is really lovely to see.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, so powerful within your own peer group, isn't it? Now you've focused a lot on understanding sensory preferences and regulatory needs for your learners. How do you unearth and unpack that with your little people?

Amy Watson: So the whole endeavour with that started with a three-year OT project. So we had to learn a lot as educators around how to intentionally teach those skills to children. So being able to identify their emotions, but notice it in naming other people, but also be aware of their sensory preferences. So looking at things that they don't like or that they enjoy more of. So it could be that I don't like it when it's too loud, but I love it when it's big and busy and fun.

So our children do a lot of intentional teaching around exploring what that feels like in their body, and we do that at gathering times, but also spontaneously in play, and that takes a lot of educator noticing and naming of that. But what happens is our children are now really capable of voicing that.

So they can tell us that, "I want to learn about this, and I want to do it in a quieter environment," or, "I want to do it with an educator," which has improved that, their confidence in their independence and exploring learning has become really strong. And they can tell us that they're competent if they have certain measures in place to support them.

So it has taken a lot of educator learning to get to this point, but I do feel that what has happened is our children are able to articulate that, and our families are telling us that as well. They're telling them at home that, "I'm feeling sad because this happened." So it's not just about naming the emotion, it's about why and what I can do to support myself with that self-regulation stuff. Even though three to five-year-olds are not expected to be self-regulators, we still need to regulate alongside them, but if they have the skills to articulate what might help them then their access to learning is easier.

Dale Atkinson: Wow. Wow. That sounds so exciting for you and your site. One of the other exciting things is that you've been sharing this learning with others. Tell us a bit about that.

Amy Watson: That is super vulnerable to be so proud of something that we do that suits our context. Our context of kindergarten is very different to the context of the kindergarten down the road from us and, across the country. So it has been vulnerable for myself and educators to share our journey, but what makes us really proud is that it inspires others to give it a go.

So what we're noticing is that other sites are being curious about what children are thinking and feeling and what they might wanna be able to learn. I think the greatest impact has been in schools. So the information that I have been sharing with schools, in particular reception teachers, has meant that reception teachers are able to take time to listen and hear what children are saying. But not just by their voice, but what their body is telling them. And what we've found that is, I have had a number of sites reach out to check in and ask if, "Oh, we've tried this because you told us that this would be really fun. We've tried it. We love it. But we're not quite sure what it means when a child shows us, something in particular in their body language. What would you do as the next step for that?"

So I think it's about, it's really inspiring when other people are curious to give things a go. We've shared around emotional intelligence, we've shared around our individual learning plans, which are quite extensive, and we haven't yet shared the work around our personal goal setting, so I'm excited to see what happens with that next.

Dale Atkinson: And I'm sure your colleagues are excited as well to receive some of that learning.

We might go from the kindy setting to the primary school setting. Amanda, “Big Questions, Bright Futures,” this is the name of your program. Can you tell us a bit about what that is?

Amanda Narroway: All of our work is really done around children's questions. So we've done a lot of work, even before we went out into our community walks, to do lots of work around that questioning and really deep listening to our children to see what they are actually noticing and observing. So we did this in the classroom first, and then we moved out into the community. So out in the walks now, our educators are confident in observing what the children are actually interested in, what they're noticing, the questions that they're asking, misconceptions, and their thinking. Then the educator needs to make an intentional decision about what she's gonna take forward back in the classroom.

So it might be a question that they asked or a theory that they heard, or just giving them other ways to express what they might have noticed out in those walks. So I have got an example when the children went down to the beach, and they found this big rock with all these markings on it, and the question was asked, "What could these markings be?" And one of the children's theories was it was a map. It was a map to tell the whales how to get to Stansbury. So the teacher decided to take this back on board and to relaunch it back into the classroom and ask the children what they were thinking. And from there, a whole term's learning was around mapping, 2D, 3D. They actually even drew their own maps of Australia from where the whales would've been coming down from the East Coast. Years ago, we would've just given them all a template to draw their map, but these ch-, these maps were just so detailed. They took so much care in them, and such a deep understanding of what they have been learning around their mapping.

Dale Atkinson: And how is it, obviously curiosity's the big part of that. What do you get when you encourage curiosity in a child?

Amanda Narroway: I mean we have to give them the provocations and the hooks to be curious, and that's what we have found the community walks are that authentic way for them to be curious. To the fact that they get so excited. So one particular time, and they were really noticing bees. And then if children had seen bees out in the environment during the week, they would come back and they would be saying, "Can we go and visit this beehive down here?" So it's just this ripple effect when children are curious and they get so engaged, and they retain the information because they're curious and they wanna know about it.

Dale Atkinson: Now, what about from the educator perspective in terms of time, effort, and needing to tailor the experience for, for these children in response to their curiosity? How do you carve out time and effort and allow that to take place within your school?

Amanda Narroway: Because this was a new process for us all, we all came together as a school, so I was also another educator in that space. So that gave them the opportunity to actually sit and listen to what the children were actually being curious about and noticing. But then I also gave them an extra NIT lesson so that they could come together, collaborate, reflect, and plan. Because definitely you need to be looking at the documentation and thinking about what they had heard so they knew what they could pull and take forward.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah. You've gotta be really deliberate and supportive in that space, don't you?

Amanda Narroway: Yes. And then we also had a mentor. So a mentor also helped us to... So another person, being a small school and with only two educators and myself, having a mentor, to have another person at that table to try and work out what this might mean and what we could take forward was really helpful as well.

Dale Atkinson: And what does that mentoring experience and interaction look like between you and the team?

Amanda Narroway: So it did start off with face-to-face using our learning, our learner-free days for that, where she would challenge our thinking. "Had you thought of this way?" She also gave other examples of how it works in bigger schools. And then we would of course being, on our mentor was in Adelaide, so she would come in with Teams meetings, couple of staff meetings, or during that NIT lesson, that extra NIT lesson, so we had to be really purposeful in that time because it was short, so it was about, okay, what are we curious about? What do we need help with? And what are we, what, where's our challenges?

Dale Atkinson: Yeah. It's so good. So exciting to have that person walk alongside you and challenge and, and help you to grow in a professional sense.

From a very small setting at Stansbury Primary School to a little bit bigger setting in Charles Campbell College, I would imagine, Rachael. The Highways Program that, that you run, which is specifically about empowering autistic students to shape their future pathways. What is the Highways Program?

Rachael Savage: The Highways Program was developed through seeing there were some really academically capable students in the school, in that senior setting, who weren't necessarily feeling confident in the transition space in terms of career development, pathway development, and understanding how they fit into their world, both in school and particularly outside of school.

So we piloted a program in conjunction with the… Student Pathways team at the Department for Education, which were fantastic that, to have them on board. And through student agency, which was, felt very risky, by the way, we developed a program where the students took the lead. It was a small group of students, all with autism, and together we slowly built a program of capacity… led by, predominantly led by them. I was just the facilitator or the mentor that sat alongside them and helped them discover themselves to be able to build programs and experiences that meant something to them. Not everything worked, but that's the way these things go, but we all learnt through that of what makes sense for their context.

Dale Atkinson: Can you tell us what worked and... or perhaps one or two examples of what worked and what didn't?

Rachael Savage: Yeah, so the thing that worked the most, which surprised me probably surprised the students as well, was the public transport day. So one of the things that the students had articulated was that they were a bit afraid to get onto public transport. As, I'm sure we're all aware, there's a lot of sensory, there's a big sensory environment. There's smells, there's sounds, there's procedures. How do you hail down a bus? What is it like on a train? There's reading timetables. What happens if you miss something? How do you fix that? There's strangers, there's people, there's things that you don't know. A lot of these young people thrive in routine. They're thriving in school under the school routine, but taking those safe risks outside of the school environment was challenging for some of them. So we did a big day where we started close to the school, got on a bus, onto the O-Bahn, into town, onto a train, onto a tram, and then and back again. And the students led the experience. We got tickets. We went through all of those little processes that seem really easy for us, that ended up being easy for them. And I guess the biggest takeaway is that all of those students are now independent on transport. Two students are now working and being able to access their workplace through public transport, which means they were able to successfully get some of that part-time work or casual work on a regular basis. And another student has formed a band in the suburbs about a half an hour away that they are able to now access on their own terms, and they're feeling such a sense of independence and pride in something that seems so simple, but I think people forget that these are huge barriers for some.

Dale Atkinson: God, that's, must be so rewarding for you personally, Rachael to watch them on that journey.

Rachael Savage: Yeah, it's particularly rewarding. Yeah.

Dale Atkinson: And what about something that hasn't worked so well?

Rachael Savage: To be able to make a pilot program run, you need to have some sort of scaffold. So you need to have something in place if the student… while the students are building that capacity to be able to articulate what they want next. They needed to know who they were first. So I guess some of those, those scaffolded programs I think they realised pretty quickly that maybe they weren't as in- it wasn't as interesting to do things in a standard way, maybe with, to use the different words, like black master type situations or programs, things that were already developed. So they were really good springboards. But we needed to move away from that quite quickly once they became empowered and understood more about themselves to be able to tell me, "What do we want next?" And what they wanted next was to connect with people with lived experience. And besides the public transport experiences, meeting people, adults who had their own stories to tell, and the students could just have time to have deep and meaningful conversations with these adults who could talk to them about their experiences at school, transitions, and in the workplace. And you could just see all the pennies drop. They became really empowered, and then there was this strong sense of advocacy for themselves and others, which was fantastic.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah. It's like agency leading to even more agency and on you go. Now you're expanding the program through the statewide Autism Pathway Network. What are you hopeful that this could mean for students across SA?

Rachael Savage: I think firstly, it's really important to acknowledge that what happened well here in the context of Charles Campbell College shouldn't be directly replicated. It's really about understanding the… the core things that work really well for most people, and then understanding what could work on your own site.

So what I hope is that schools are empowered to take a risk, to understand that sometimes when you put something in place, it might not work exactly the way you think it might in the beginning, but it's all learning. Students who feel empowered to use agency, their own agency, they are getting something out of it. That's probably the most powerful thing.

I think as educators, sometimes we feel a sense of timing. We work towards assessment or a grade, particularly in the secondary sector. We're working with tight timelines to the SACE or to a grade, and sometimes we get trapped in needing something to look a certain way or to have a certain outcome. For the students to be able to grab hold, take charge, their hands are on the wheel, and to be able to let them go through that, I think that's the most important thing, and that is the learning I would like educators to come away with, that it's okay.

Dale Atkinson: There was a lot of nodding going on there, Rachael, while you were talking, particularly about the need for nuanced, site-based contextual responses that, that reflect the… the kids. That it is essentially about listening and giving the opportunity for them to speak and let you know what they are seeking from their educational experience.

So obviously, fantastic contextual responses and from each of you within your very different settings. What's the common thread and I'll start with you, Amy, what's the common thread that you can observe in listening to your colleagues about regardless of age, this is the most important thing for kids?

Amy Watson: I think the most important thing for children in their learning environments is the genuine trust that we as educators provide to them to take ownership and responsibility of their learning. And I think the other two ladies also mentioned that with this, learner agency offers huge motivation, greater engagement. Children become more self-aware of their capabilities. They're more confident and more resilient to give things a go. Children own what they're learning. So if they develop a plan about what they wanna learn about, if things don't go to plan and work out how they wish it to, they actually revisit the plan. They become better at problem solving because they really wanna see it work. Rather than when we deliver something, they'll take what they take from it. But when we give them something, they wanna own it. They want it to be really successful, and I think you can see that right through to adulthood. Even myself as an educator, I learnt a lot through our process, and I wanted it to be successful, so I tried and tried again. I was curious. I took risks. So yeah, I think that's really prominent for children.

Amanda Narroway: Oh definitely. But... And I agree with what Amy says, but really bringing out that capable and confident, so sharing their theories and their wonderings. Some of the questions that the children have asked really do blow us away. That learning process, which you talked about, that deep engagement. And the biggest surprise for us about being the capable and confident is how much they want to share their learning with others. We have a LET come in, or another colleague and they want to take them to the floor or to the walls to show them that they're learning. So again, it's their ownership that they're proud of.

Rachael Savage: I think it's about recognising that young people are experts in their own experience, and I think we've all talked about that today. I think if they can understand their interests their challenges, and what they need to be successful even if they don't have the ability to articulate that well at the time. So it's an important distinction between giving students that voice and actually allowing them to influence the decisions that we make, maybe as a site, as a school, or as a system. So I think that student agency is really when it influences decisions.

Dale Atkinson: God, what a what a good way to wrap up. Student agency is when it influences decisions. Amy, Amanda, and Rachael, thank you.

To find out more about all the finalists in this year's Public Education Awards, check out the link in our show notes. And to our guests today, it's been great chatting with you.

Amy Watson, Amanda Narroway, Rachael Savage: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.