14 November 2022

Join us as the principals of Murray Bridge and Salisbury high schools share how their teams achieved growth in their senior secondary learner outcomes. Both have complex schools and a high proportion of students with issues that can impact their readiness to learn - so how have they gone about creating a positive culture?

Show Notes

• School improvement resources

Transcript

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name's Dale Atkinson from the Department for Education and today we are meeting with Sylvia Groves from Salisbury High School and Ruth Mussger from Murray Bridge High School. Every year we have what's known as Leaders Day. It's an opportunity for all the principals and preschool directors to come together in the morning. They hear from the minister and the chief executive and other senior people in the department about the department's strategic direction, some of the priorities for the year ahead. And then in the afternoon the really enriching part takes place, which is where the leaders come together and learn from one another. And Ruth and Sylvia were giving presentations at this year's Leaders Day, and they were speaking about their high schools, their improvement journeys in those high schools, and the outcomes that they've been able to achieve for their students.

So that's the reason why we're speaking with you today. So, Sylvia and Ruth thank you very much for joining us. So, Ruth, to you first, can you just give us a bit of context around your site? What's unique about Murray Bridge High School?

Ruth Mussger: Sure. Murray Bridge High School is a large rural school. I think one of the things that stands out for us is that we are the only feeder high school for our community. So we have lots of small primary schools that join together with us at high school. We are an entrepreneurial specialist school and a music focused school.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah. And you've got a fairly diverse student background as well don’t you.  The number of children from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island?

Ruth Mussger: Absolutely, yes.

Dale Atkinson: In addition to that, as a result of the industries that are up there, quite a number of children from international backgrounds as well.

Ruth Mussger: Less so while Thomas Foods, which is the major employer in the town, is rebuilding after the fire in 2018, which had a devastating impact on the community, and we saw a lot of our families having to leave to seek employment elsewhere. We're really looking forward to this year when Thomas Foods back online.

Dale Atkinson: And Sylvia, you're an hour and change away from Murray Bridge High School. But I think in terms of student population and parent background, we're talking about a sort of similar  sort of setting aren’t we?

Sylvia Groves: We're a Category two school and with a high degree of complexity, which I'm sure Murray Bridge is as well. Our numbers currently sit at just under 1100 and we have over 30 different cultures represented at our site, which adds richness that we love. 11% of our students are Aboriginal, which is high for a metropolitan school and which is also growing rapidly. We have 77 special needs students who also add a richness to our site. We have 234 students with an identified disability. We have 528 students identified in CCD, a third of our students that your students and that's growing 55% of our students are school card, which adds another layer of complexity and our families experience significant social disadvantage, which has been exacerbated by COVID, which continues to take a toll. Of our enrolling students in year seven, 37% were below and in year 8, 36 were.

Which one of our priorities is helping our kids to learn how to read. And in previous years that deficit was closer to 50%. So we've had to train our teachers how to teach reading and now moving into the numeracy space, we’re well supported by families who believe the school will make a difference to their children. And for some time we've had waiting lists to get into our school and we are a positive sitewith minimal staff movement and there is something about the school in the community that tethers staff to our school, which is great for stability.

Dale Atkinson: But one of the things that kind of jumps out as you talk is actually one of the things that also is very apparent in Ruth’s presentation to the Leaders  day, which is you both have a very clear focus on who are the kids that you're working with and you've got a really deep understanding of that. How do you go about gaining that deep understanding of your student cohort to help drive the improvement journey?

Ruth Mussger: For us, it's been a matter of going out to our feeder schools and really spending a lot of time working with the teachers and with families to really understand what students bring to the table so that we're starting from the point where they're accessing learning already rather than assuming they're an empty slate. That's been really important to us. We have similar statistics to Salisbury in the number of students below standard of educational achievement in literacy and numeracy. So the mantra of a year's growth in a year for us can't happen. It has to be more than that and significantly more than that if we're going to get our kids to catch up.

Dale Atkinson: Is that a similar experience to you Sylvia?

Sylvia Groves: Absolutely. And we've got significant programs in place to support that. In terms of students, we have to know our students and relationships are the critical thing at our site. So we have a care program where students from year 7 to 10 stay with the same care teacher, and then in 11 and 12 they will have a different care teacher.

I also take a care class, which helps me have a greater understanding of families and have that same connection with students. And our mantra is no surprises. So we need to know all the time where our students are at and we expect that of our teachers as well. So we have a five weekly reporting system. That's what our clients want and while that is onerous for our staff, it does make a big difference.

Dale Atkinson: So those things don't happen by accident. They build over time and done in a very deliberate way. How   have you gone about that in terms of approaching that with your teams, with you, with your teachers, and approaching that with your parent community?

Ruth Mussger: The focus has been on, yes, we're a complex site and yes, we have our challenges, but let's focus on the over 95% of students who are there and just want to get on with learning. Let's work out what the systems are, the processes are that enable them to do what they need to do best and then add support layers for those who need additional help.

Sylvia Groves: I think too developing a culture of high expectations was really critical to our site because many years ago, and I've been lucky enough to be there for a long time, getting over the line was the main thing. Very few kids went to university and even the attitude of staff to students wasn't high. So developing that strong culture of high expectations for both staff and students was really important at out site.

And the mantra with no surprises so that we know what's going on at all times. So we worked really hard on getting helping the kids to believe that they can achieve and achieve well and they can compete. They're not defined by their postcode. But we also had to develop strategies to support our staff, to build the belief for them and have the courage to give our kids 20s, to know what 20 looks like, and to put structures in place so that the staff feel supported because initially they felt like we were overreporting and we do overreport. But that's what we need to do because we need to know. So we listen to what our staff are saying. We put strategies in place to support them, whether it's no meetings during snapshot time. And when we get our results, we look at what sort of support do staff need, what strategies can we put in place so that they feel the process is also about them as well.

Dale Atkinson: And Ruth  in your presentation, you I think, there were a couple of very individual personalised stories from some of those students about some of the work that had gone on in terms of building their ambition and lifting their sights in terms of where they wanted to be.

Ruth Mussger: And I think that teaching fraternity are absolutely critical in having those conversations. Kids have got to trust first, and I think that we're exactly the same. And once you build that level of trust, then you can have the hard conversations around, what are you doing with the rest of your life? Let's work out where you want to go, what direction you want to take, and how we can support you to get there. So the individualized pathway planning is a very strong feature of our senior school.

Dale Atkinson: Is that something you focus on as well?

Sylvia Groves: So we've used a multi-pronged approach. So we have the positive behaviour for learning, we have positive education and career development and those things sort of steer the ship and we're constantly working on that. So we're always hunting for the good. We're looking at ways that we can move forward, not just for our students, but for our community as well. There's a lot of training and investment in those.

Dale Atkinson: What sort of focus have you put on in terms of creating those teaching teams and those communities of learning among your staff?

Ruth Mussger: One of the critical things is that we had to create time to allow good things to happen and schools are busy places. You can't expect that teachers will develop incredible lesson plans and do all the work that they need to happen during the day and also come up with great new ideas. So creating think tanks and opportunities for people to be involved in those has been really important for us.

Quarantining time for teachers to work together. It means getting rid of the extra, we always saw that the one hour staff meeting was an essential element of our week and we discovered that, you know what, a half hour or 20 minute online briefing every week is enough, which frees up 40 minutes for other things to happen.

Sylvia Groves: We’re similar. Every Wednesday we finish the school day at 2.15 and that time then is quarantined for professional learning teams and very much  the same, intentional lesson planning using data to make sure that we're getting the planning right for our students. The English teachers who are doing the literacy blocks in year seven and eight, they get half a day a term to support them in their planning for that.

So it is very much valuing what the teachers are doing, but also creating that space because if you don't create that space, it's not going to happen. There's too many competing demands. So that's been really critical for us, is having that time and listening to what staff need and professional development has to be highly valued and teachers have to think that they have access to it, which they do with a large part of our budget goes towards professional development.

Ruth Mussger: In our situation. It's not just about teachers coming together in learning areas, but it's also around teachers who all teach common students together and finding out what it is about that student. Why are you getting success here where I'm not? What's happening in your class? It's different in mine and I think that's been pivotal.

Sylvia Groves: We've also created an innovative pedagogies team of people who could put up their hand and say, I want to be part of that, who are leading forward more innovation that they can share with other staff who have less time. And that team is now looking at powerful learners and trying to build agency for our students because our students like things to be done to them. They don't actually want to have to think as much. So our drive now is to move from the teaching of embracing and getting the students to take more ownership of their own learning.

Dale Atkinson: As you describe that, it strikes me that these things build a momentum of their own, but I'm assuming that it takes a little bit of a push to start that ball rolling. Is that fair to say?

Sylvia Groves: Well, definitely with the PBL. So we've been a positive behaviour learning school for a number of years, but we sort of do it on our own and it's just come at this opportunity where the department have realised that this is a really good practice and they've invited us, which to our surprise, because we're already doing it. And we went back to our staff to ask them if they thought it would be good for our school to do. And everyone about one said they wanted to do it. Getting the buy in from staff is really important. So as a leader it's really important that I give them all the information on why we should do it, so that they also have ownership, and that's been a really big part of anything we do. And keeping the focus narrow so staff remind me don't deviate too much, don't make us do other things. When we’re on the literacy path which we've now broadened. But initially they would say to me, But you said we weren't going to do anything else. So I have to listen to the staff a lot because that is that professional trust. But I also have to let them take risks and they do and they don't always work out, but they feel confident that they can put up their hand and say, Can I try this? And we will finance it and give them the courage to do it. And nine times out of ten it will benefit our students.

Ruth Mussger: Getting permission has become so important in our lives, hasn't it?

Sylvia Groves: And releasing for us too.

Dale Atkinson: You touched a bit earlier, actually, before we came on air a conversation about stability within the workforce being really important, how are you able to kind of maintain that? I think Ruth you said that in your presentation as well, that you've been able to keep a core team together.

Ruth Mussger: Yes. And I think for the first time in a long time, also having teachers from outside of our area reaching out and saying, gee, I'd like to come and work at your school, which is an absolute breath of fresh air. It is around building that reputation for teachers to be able to get on with what they love doing best and that's teaching and learning. Removing barriers that teachers often see are the stumbling blocks for what wears them down and makes life too hard. So having processes and procedures in place, supporting everyone to work together has changed the culture.

Sylvia Groves: Culture is very big at our site and we have a lot of young staff, but we do have older staff as well and we value all different levels of experience. We try and also make it a social aspect. So at the moment following COVID, we have a themed happy hour. The tech studies did The Block  and things like that. We're constantly trying to bring our staff together and value them and meet their needs. Whether it's not to be isolated cause COVID did isolate us for quite a while. But Salisbury there's something that gets in that staff's blood. They want to stay there. We have many people who are there long term. And probably our biggest issue now is that we have a lot of emerging leaders who want leadership at Salisbury, but they don't want to leave and I can’t provide enough leadership jobs. And I see schools around me who don't have that stability. That's one of the major reasons they struggle because they're constantly training and getting people up to speed and it takes time.

Ruth Mussger: And going back over old ground when there's a new influx of people.

Dale Atkinson: As we're talking, we are a couple of weeks out from year 12 exams. We are by the time this goes to air probably will have been sat. Can you talk to us a little bit about your ambitions for this year? What are your expectations?

Ruth Mussger:  I  have huge expectations for seeing some of the processes and initiatives that we've put into place actually play out in a real sense. Our focus has for the last two years been on Aboriginal learners and their achievement and success and SACE completion and lots of work there in building capacity of staff and students. One of the areas that we've identified is that our students generally in an exam situation would be a grade lower than what their other grades are showing.

The temptation for a lot of us to say, well, they just need more exam practice is something that I've had to really fight, because what we know is that it's the language that our students don't have, the sophistication of that language. The tier two and three words that help them tell what they know is what's lacking. And that's a longer-term process. And that's starting as we do in year eight and seven in building that capacity and then seeing that change happen.

Dale Atkinson: That shift between not just understanding the concepts but being able to describe the sophisticated term.

Sylvia Groves: And right now we're working with every single year 12 student to maximise their opportunity because we have been hit by COVID. And these students for three years it’s embedded. And as I was speaking to before, attendance has been an issue for us. The competing demands of an opportunity for our students to get part time work and extensive part time work has impacted on their studies. So while we are expecting some really good results and one of our Aboriginal students is going to have exceptional results, which we're super excited about, we know that our results are not going to come on the trajectory we've had for the last number of years, which is a little bit disappointing for us because hard work is still there and students have also been less resilient and that will be a challenge for us in the future. When in doubt, they've opted out and no matter how much we've wanted them to remain in their schooling, that's been a challenge as well but we don't give up and we will to the to the deaf knell will br working with every student to make sure that they can maximise their opportunities.

Ruth Mussger: And I think we're in exactly the same boat. The other area that we have developed is our independent learning centre, which currently has around 120 students from ages 16 to 21. So that the opportunities to reconnect with learning and to make that final step to complete SACE is still there for those kids who take that easier route when when the going gets tough and we've had some above average state improvement in SACE completion through our ILC.

Dale Atkinson: It strikes me as speaking to both of you that there's a sort of an underlying philosophy of being really strict on the things that you're going after, but with the flexibility about how you approach those things. The need to be adaptive to contexts and shift your thinking when the circumstances in front of you change. What are your priorities given COVID and some other things that have gone on in the last 18 months, what do you priorities moving forward within the structures that you've already set up?

Ruth Mussger: The key thing is nothing new unless you take something away has been our mantra. Where does what we're initiating fit into our improvement agenda? And if it doesn't, then it doesn't happen. We had to remove a lot of barriers to learning, in particular the digital solution. It didn't matter how many different leasing and you know, those kinds of arrangements we had in place, we never got more than 50% buy in from our families and in the end we made the decision it is a crucial element and luckily we did. It was just before COVID to say we're just going to buy a device for every student. Everyone then has a level playing field. That changed a lot of what we were able to do in those early years in really maximising online learning opportunities, which for a lot of our kids when they were away and this year it was the teacher was away one week and then the student was away next week and then another group away the week after. There was no continuity and it wasn't smooth, but we were able to set up systems where there wasn't that lack of availability of resources for kids. The backwards mapping of skills and literacy demands has been our biggest buy-in for staff. They can see that if kids need these skills in year 12, they don't need magicy arrive in year 12 with them. They have to be developed and nurtured. So how do we design learning that enables that to happen? And once again, having the pockets of brilliance within our staff that take an idea and run with that Murray Bridge writing guide is an example of that. We know that our site improvement plan focused on literacy and numeracy, but in our complex sites there is more that goes on than that. And so developing a strategic plan around all of those elements and how they all fit together was really beneficial.

Dale Atkinson: So how do you as leaders create time in your day to day for the instructional leadership piece in the face of you know, those operational reactive demands, how do you keep a real focus on student outcomes?

Sylvia Groves: That is always a challenge and you can only have so many hours in the day. I'm very fortunate that I have an exceptional leadership team, so that allows me freedom and also because I have a lot of trust in them to do that role. We also have strong levels of communication structures, so that allows staff to reach to me and to other leadership and to support the voice across the site, which is really important. I make time for key meetings, but also fine tune the meeting so if it's not necessary, it's not going to happen and really value what's going on in those meetings and make sure I'm visible as much as possible so that I'm in tune with what's going on at the site. Observations has become a big part of what we do. Make sure that I'm in classrooms and the best part of that is it affirms what's going on in the school. And I get a lot of joy out of seeing what's going on and listening to the kids love it as well. When you come in, you know, they like when you sit next to them and they hear and see what you're doing, give feedback to staff, which, you know, they don't work in silos. They're part of a bigger system. That's been something we're really working on as part of our school processes and is embraced by the staff as well. I constantly try and listen to staff and find ways that we work smarter, not harder. What are the important things? So for us it's positive. behaviour for learning will be a big thrust to school and the giving the student agency.

But we can't let go of the work we're doing in numeracy and literacy and we also have to look at what are the good things we've got, what do we keep? Let's not keep changing for the sake of change as well. Having a clear class, being on the front line in terms of parent interviews, year 12 kids getting them in, all those sorts of things. That's what staff see as well. So it's really important. I'm not just in my office, I'm not just doing emails which you could do all day, but honestly, if you could. But that that's I need to be really visible and whether that at happy hour, in the classrooms, walking off and I'll be at the front gate in the mornings. The first lesson I often walk around to make sure kids are getting into class, it’s that visibility that's really important.

Ruth Mussger: And I'd go one step further also and say that good leadership teams don't happen by accident and it is leading from the front foot. We've found that like you we have so many staff who have spent their time want to head into leadership, don't necessarily have a leadership experience. So providing the opportunities for that training and as a whole leadership group, 24 of us all spent the whole of last year on leadership training and then carrying on this year into the Orbis instructional leadership.

The mantra is that we are all instructional leaders and it's not just about me getting into a classroom, it's about every single leader being in classroom and being visible around the school. And I think that the key thing for me, if it's not in my diary, it doesn't happen. So I do have to schedule get out of the office. That would be my key message to anyone.

Dale Atkinson: Well this is a conversation that I think could probably go on for another couple of hours, to be perfectly honest, if you didn't have to get out of the office and back out to running schools. Thank you very much for your time. This has been really great, so we thank you very much for your time.

Ruth and Sylvia: You're welcome.