Less is More - Deimplementation!

Over the last couple of years at Emmanuel Catholic College we have been on a journey of Educational Transformation, to better engage our students and significantly enhance their day-to-day experience in a large secondary school. As we seek to continually evolve away from the traditional model of schooling towards an authentically ‘Fit for Purpose’ education in today’s world, our changes, whilst multifaceted, are all interlinked and carefully crafted. One such area, is redefining the work of staff, not just through their pedagogical practice but also in regard to our overall operational structures and practices. In short, we have embraced Deimplementation!

?Over the last two years we have.

·????? Reduced the number of outside hours events staff are required to attend. Where once all staff were expected to attend all whole school significant events, they can now choose unless the event relates directly to their specific role.

·????? Significantly?reduced the amount of out of hours meetings staff are required to attend.?Our current Enterprise Agreement stipulates staff attend no more than 15 hours of meetings outside school hours a term. We have been in front of this for some time with staff only being required to attend on average 2 hours, one Staff Meeting and one Professional Learning Community a Term. Neither run for more than an hour in duration and if there is not a significant agenda for the staff meeting or we can communicate the information better in another way, we cancel, as opposed to continuing for no other reason than it was scheduled.

At the end of last year, we removed Learning Area meetings from our calendar. They are still expected to be held once a term but how and when was placed in the autonomous hands of our Heads of Learning Area to decide.

The requirements for staff holding promotional leaderships positions may vary slightly but rarely for more than an additional two hours.

·????? The Year 7 Camp was removed amidst due consideration for the financial stress on parents, a repeat event of the traditional Year 6 Camp held months earlier and the stress and anxiety placed on students at the same time as they were navigating the commencement of High School. 12 Months later this has not negatively impacted our students but had a positive effect on the staff that normally would have attended. ?

·????? Generative Artificial Intelligence has been utilised to communicate effectively with the community in place of a number of parent evenings that largely contained repeated information from an earlier event. None the less, we take every opportunity to welcome the community into the school, we are just doing it with different events.

·????? With our Learning Management System SEQTA providing parents and students with more than ample opportunity to monitor progress and concerns, we removed all Interim reports with the exception of Year 7, recognising the need to formally communicate with our parents in reference to their children’s transition to high school.

·????? The removal of the traditional 6 Period a day timetable to a combination of 100 and 50 minutes learning blocks means less classes a day a teacher has to plan for and teach. It has taken the hustle and bustle of the school day away and resulted in a calmness across the school and improved staff /student relationships.

·????? Emmanuel Flexi – The optional 4-day week for Year 12’s also provides time for Teachers of Year 12 classes and / or allows time to work with these students on a much more personal level and can provide even more space in a teacher’s week.

?A collaborative process provided no concerns to these changes and subsequent surveys etc. have indicated such changes have had no negative impact at all but has been highly beneficial to our staff. All too often we assume change won’t work given our own context and that our students, staff and parents may respond negatively so we don’t go there. Time and time again I have found at Emmanuel, if you ask, more often than not, they will respond with their support.

In many regards this just seemed like common sense to us at the time, however, since coming across Making Room for Impact: A De-implementation Guide for Educators (Hamilton et al., 2024) we have undertaken a more formal process to consider de-Implementation across our College. With increasing staffing issues this has become an imperative but at the same time such a practice enables us to maximise the positive impact we can have on students and improve the health and wellbeing of our staff at the same time.

We have undertaken professional learning in this space with the whole College staff. In doing so we all acknowledge that traditionally schools favour addition. In order to improve we have often added new initiatives in our schools with a preferred outcome at the forefront, but rarely do we consider the possible negative outcome elsewhere or further down the track, and thus the impact on our staff. Most are in agreement that school calendars can be ludicrous, jumping from one event to the other, sometimes delivering minimal impact, but as individuals and departments we prefer our own events are left alone. We do things for no other reason than that is the way they have always been done, often having no positive effect on our core business and often leaving us with outdated, over engineered practices that significantly impact on staff time and thus their health and wellbeing. At the same time, we must consider the value for money of our efforts and ultimately the extent to which our practices deliver positive outcomes for the whole school community.

Throughout our collaborative professional learning we have given due consideration to the methodology outlined in Making Room for Impact: A De-implementation Guide for Educators (Hamilton et al., 2024):

·????? Remove?the practice completely.

·????? Reduce?how frequently you do it.

·????? Re-engineer?the practice to take less time; and or

·????? Replace?it with something else that's more efficient or effective.

In doing so our staff have identified what they can do in their own professional / personal lives to de-implement and our Learning Areas are working collaboratively within their own departments to do the same. As leadership in the College we have listened very closely to the feedback and data we have received in this space from the staff and how it will relate to the whole school.

I acknowledge such a process can be time consuming, however the long terms gains will be worth every minute. ?We are committed to continuing to de-Implement with the absolute certainty that it will enhance the health and wellbeing of staff, which in turn will lead to an improved experience and achievement for our students.

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Hamilton, A., Hattie, J., and Wiliam, D. (2024) Making Room for Impact: A De-implementation Guide for Educators. Corwin.