Over the previous months and going back into last year, we have been working on a school improvement plan. Unlike the traditional strategic plan, an improvement plan assumes that improvement and development are on-going activities rather than achievable events.

Our plan is formed around four key priorities:

1. Shaping everything we do around our core purpose statements

2. Teacher and staff development

3. Community partnerships

4. Learning from the past, eg the recent pandemic

 The plan contains some key elements, but is designed to get us always thinking about improvement and progress rather than achievement. That is not to say there are not events or activities that have a finite end which, once instituted, help with on-going improvement. Rather, it speaks to a culture of continuous improvement whereby we are always looking for opportunities to reflect on what we are doing and to find ways to improve, change, and progress.

The key elements of our plan are:

1. An explicit improvement agenda focused on our core purpose
2. A school culture that promotes learning and personal development
3. An expert teaching team that uses effective pedagogical strategies and differentiates for student need
4. Systematic curriculum review, design and delivery
5. The targeted use of school resources
6. Strong school-community partnerships, especially with parents
7. The analysis and use of data for improvement

Under each of these elements are some focus areas for this year, some of which will roll forward and others of which will change. We will report regularly on what is being done in each element and introduce new focus areas as they come to light or if the need arises.

We are currently working on some key performance indicators for each focus area that will help us know when we have made a change and if it is effective.

Our experiences through the pandemic and home learning trial are the type of events that we need to use to look at improvement. I have set up an Academic Committee to oversee a project we are calling: Capture the Momentum. This will ensure we learn lessons from the recent past and use them to spur us on to better teaching and learning in the future.

As a school we want to be instruments of transformative change in the lives of our students, equipping them with a mindset and the skills to boldly take on the challenges of twenty-first century life. In this we want to partner with you so that together we set our children off on a path to purpose and fulfillment.

Phillip Nash

Principal