11 June 2026

Berri Regional Secondary College, 2025 winner of the Public Education Award for Inclusive Practices in Education, reimagined the traditional school house sports competition to encompass diversity, belonging and unity. Principal Clinton Ridgway, along with Sports and HPE Coordinator Josh Vater share how students were the instigators of the Inclusion Cup – an event with such a variety of activities that every student can participate and feel valued. The event has resulted in greater attendance, improved wellbeing, and an overall sense of school pride. The school presented their journey at the Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL) National Inclusion and Disability Conference, showcasing how student agency and creative event design can transform school culture.

Show Notes

Winner - 2025 Public Education Award – Inclusive Practices in Education

Berri Regional Secondary College

ACEL Inclusion and Disability Conference 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're talking about the Australian Council for Education Leaders' National Inclusion and Disability Conference, which is being presented in partnership with the South Australian Department for Education in Adelaide.

The theme of the event is One Goal, Many Voices, and part of the conference has allowed us to showcase some excellent practice out amongst our schools in the field of inclusion. And to that end, we're joined by Berri Regional Secondary College Principal, Clinton Ridgway. Welcome. Thank you. And his Sport and HPE coordinator, Josh Vader. Josh.

Josh Vater: Hey Dale.

Dale Atkinson: Now, why have we brought you in here, Clinton? What are we talking about?

Clinton Ridgway: We're talking about the way of being. So how are we being inclusive and what we do as a school, probably not groundbreaking, but just little aspects of our school that allow students to feel that belonging, safety, and connection to a place and to each other.

Dale Atkinson: Now, you're very proud of the work you've done around creating an inclusive education environment. One of the things that is emblematic of it, not the only thing you do, but is emblematic of the work you do, is the idea that you've moved from the traditional house sporting competition to something that's a bit more inclusive, that is the Inclusion Cup. What is it?

Clinton Ridgway: Think about a nine-year-old birthday party. All the fun, enjoyable things. I guess primary schools do it really well. In high schools, it's more, all your, carnivals are about the winner, about the first, second, and third, the ribbons, the trophies. And let's be honest, in high schools they’re traditions that we don't get much participation in. So we tried to flip it on its head and go well, "Let's build a healthy competition” that involves donut eating contests, STEM challenges, table tennis, frisbee. Yeah, you name it. Whatever the kids chose, and Josh can probably talk more about how we got to the activities, and they'll always change based on the cohorts. But let's have some fun. Let's connect with each other and connect in different ways I guess.

Dale Atkinson: So, Josh, this is a pretty interesting challenge as a Sports and HPE coordinator to have. How do you go about it?

Josh Vater: I suppose I’ll first of all talk about how it was born. Like Clint said, we do all the traditional cross-country, swimming, athletics and that's important to us as a school. We've ran them for a long time.

A student who was in year 11 at the time, we got to the end of that period, which is early term two, and she wanted to make sure or propose that we extend our house culture and our house competition beyond just the swimming, athletics, and cross country. And the original proposal was actually – she wanted to do a sports day. So. like literally different sports. Let's - she's like "can we do something maybe in term three and we just play netball, basketball football, hockey, everything, you name it, on a day in a carnival?" And then it grew from, and we put the lens of it on it that, yeah, that'd be great and being a PE coordinator that sounds like my favourite day. But that's, we just know that's not every kid. And if we look at our data from our swimming, athletics, cross country days, our attendance has improved over a number of years, and we've done a lot of little things to try to improve that. But, at the same time, it just doesn't capture opportunities for everyone.

So we essentially then took that idea, took it back to house leaders, took it to the sports committee and tried to grow on how could we include everyone? Like, how could we have things that every student would get excited about? And every student would be able to participate in, have some success? We want it to be fun and a little bit competitive, without being playing for sheep stations I suppose.

Dale Atkinson: You touched on this a little bit, but to what degree are the kids driving this as an agenda?

Josh Vater: Yeah like I said, it came from a student proposal, and then I just take it to house leaders, and every year I've gone to house leaders to then take it to their houses. So we have four houses, our traditional houses that sort of come with us from the old Glossop High School days, and then essentially surveyed them of “what do you want?” And then it's my job to go “how do I turn that into some sort of competition?" And so they, everything, like Clint said before, we've had eating competitions through to different types of sports or activities, through to what house can do a puzzle fastest. Like anything! Someone brought in an old Nintendo 64 one year. We did some Mario Kart races. Like anything that will get as many kids as possible involved. So it, it does. We've had two years of it. It does provide some challenge to come up each year with what kids will like. Some stuff we keep, some stuff we completely throw out and change, but essentially take it back to the students. No point in me as a mid-30-year-old person saying, "Oh, I reckon this would be good," but the, I'm not the person we're trying to target it at. What do our students want to do?

Dale Atkinson: So Clint, how do you create the space and give the flexibility for your educators to lean into this?

Clinton Ridgway: Our role as educators is to create the environment for kids to achieve, thrive, and be connected. So, how do we empower them? There's no silly ideas. We looked at the end of the House Cup and we had a stage two class put a collaborative task together around a Colour Run and raise money for an awareness that was close to their heart. So we just continuously challenge and shift and move things around to provide the opportunity for it to happen.

Josh Vater: Can I jump in there? Sorry. To answer from my perspective, I suppose as a PE coordinator who runs a bunch of days and staff get upset with me when I say, "We're doing swimming carnival, we're doing this," and I'm taking away lessons and time and those sorts of things that every teacher holds really close and precious. When I then went to leadership and had a proposal of "I'm gonna take another whole day," – to have the backing of not only principal and exec, but all the leadership team to go, well yeah there's clearly a need, there's a real clear purpose behind it. That, I think that speaks for where we're at as a school around, yes, we are there for teaching and learning, but it doesn't always happen based off the set curriculum and assessing that. It's, we want to create opportunities for people to be engaged, connected, have fun, enjoy each other's company. I think that's really special about where we're at as a school.

Dale Atkinson: Now, there's structural things that can work to facilitate this too, Clint. What have you done in terms of your school to make time and space available in the schedule?

Clinton Ridgway: Yeah well, what we've tried to do is create a structure for the needs of the kids at any time. So our junior secondary structure's very different to our senior secondary structure. So within year 10 to 12, basically we run a three-day timetable, Monday to Wednesday, which is majority of their learning, three of the four lessons. So they all have a single lesson in the Thursday, Friday, and it provides opportunity. We've got about 100-plus students that do VET on a Thursday, we have now academies running across our region, we have a lot of students, we've got 34 students doing trainees or apprenticeships – so creating opportunities that they can put their learning into practice, and those experiences that we talk about over those two days allows us to then create space where we can put more and more on these two days that it can be flexible I guess, and continually shift and change to fit the needs of the kids coming through.

Dale Atkinson: That’s one of those inherent tensions, isn't it, in education between how much you focus on, the core academic product and how you do some of those enabling things that create an environment that kids are really engaged in and excited to be involved with. What are the markers that you're seeing, Clint, around engagement, wellbeing, behaviour that have been influenced by this program?

Clinton Ridgway: For me, obviously the greater attendance, right? So that [the Inclusion Cup] had greater attendance than any of our carnivals we've had previously. The impact on kids' faces that, and it's hard to measure in data and things like that. We can talk about we had minimal behaviours, we can talk about increased attendance, but actually walking around and looking at the activities, going back to the videos from that day and going, "Wow, look at the kids' faces. Look at their ability to connect with another human." Those are the measurable impacts.

Teachers working with kids, volunteers coming into the school. We had the fire service there spraying water over our kids. We had buckets of water getting thrown on me and the deputy, like that experience and that opportunity those kids had in that moment is priceless.

I keep coming back to - how do we continuously provide more and more of that opportunity? And I keep coming back to that power of agency. There's no silly ideas. If a kid's coming to us or a teacher's coming to me with an idea, how do we empower that idea? And, yes, challenge back at times and say, "Okay, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that?" But then go back to what Josh talked about around that clear purpose and going “this could be a great experience”.

Dale Atkinson: Josh, is there anything that you've seen in the course of these activities that's really reinforced why this is the right thing to do?

Josh Vater: Yeah, and to piggyback off what Clint's message there was, I'm fortunate I deal with say swimming and athletics and cross-country and all these sort of events where you see the top end of achievement, and you celebrate them by all means, but there's so many students that you don't get that engagement with, you don't see that experience with. And I'm fortunate on the days that we've run this, I don't actually put myself on a station or with a group, and I just bounce around and get to see a bit of everything, which is awesome. And to see just the engagement with the kids that maybe have been really disengaged, for staff to then bond with students over different things outside of the classroom, outside of a science lesson or a maths lesson where someone might have some challenging behaviour, but they're bonding over how many, how many marshmallows they can fit in their mouth, for example, as one of the challenges, it’s pretty cool to see.

Dale Atkinson: So what advice would you both give to other schools that might be thinking about leaning into this?

Clinton Ridgway: For me, it's about going back to the clear purpose. What are you trying to achieve? And I keep coming back to that experience, that connection piece. Having fun in an environment with peers that, yeah, you might, Josh talked about teachers might come back and say, "Hey, we're wasting a day, wasting this," but the value in the day and the value in connecting just really supports that cultural piece and that that, wellbeing I guess. And the challenge for us is: How do we create the environment for things to happen? So that's probably from a principal side of things, and to provide agency not only to my teachers and my leaders, but my students as well.

Dale Atkinson: Josh, where would you like to take it next?

Josh Vater: Can I get an extra couple of days into the calendar or… yeah I suppose from my point of view, when I stepped into the role, and this is what we'll talk a little bit about at the conference tomorrow as well, just where are the, where do the opportunities lie to just not just always roll out the same thing.

Even with our carnival this year, I haven't sat down yet and got all the feedback and what we're gonna do in terms of activities. But just forever looking for change, like forever looking for what's the next iteration of it. We've had this, we also added our house championship, which think like Hogwarts Cup sort of thing, style which encompasses everything. Again we still value our swimming and athletic and our traditionals. within that we capture I suppose achievement of students academically, but we also just look at what's the, like we honour and reward the houses that have the best participation. Just or just rock up. "Hey, your house is gonna do well if you just attend." Like we celebrate sort of everything. So just looking for more opportunities to, to give kids connection, 'cause that's what we're there for.

Dale Atkinson: Fantastic. And if you'd like to know more about what they're up to at Berri Regional Secondary College, you can look in our show notes. They are also Public Education Awards winners for Inclusive Practices in Education. Clinton, Josh, thank you very much for your time.

Clinton Ridgway: Nah, appreciate it. Thanks.

Josh Vater: Thanks for having us.