School Improvement in Australian Catholic Education: The 4 Pillars of Opportunity

Author: Heidi McGlashan, HPTschools

Contributors: Dr Pete Stebbins, PhD; Alistair Kerr; Andrew Murray; Dr Danielle Stebbins, PhD

Catholic schools are a major part of Australia’s educational ecosystem providing high quality education to generations of young Australians, now numbering in their millions. Catholic schools are nestled in every community and shine like a beacon that lights the way – shaping students’ lives in their education, and in their connections with faith, family, community, our environment, and society.

Over the last 200 years Catholic schools have helped nurture a more just, tolerant, and cohesive society and continue to do so with a strong commitment to excellence and equity in education.(1)

Australian Catholic Schools: Challenges & Opportunities

Australian Catholic Schools face extraordinary challenges right now – especially as they strive to innovate to accommodate for changes to the Australian Curriculum, enhanced inclusivity requirements, changes to school behaviour management and multi-tiered support systems – all the while keeping religious identity and mission at the heart of their agendas.?

Leading such worthwhile school improvement presents an enormous challenge for many Catholic School Leaders who are also facing significant staff shortages, rising concerns about rapidly evolving staff and student wellbeing needs, and an industrial environment setting the expectation for higher support regarding teacher workload management.

This presents an extraordinary challenge for Catholic School Leaders across Australia. One which requires not just an incredible faith and deep relational commitment to staff and students, but also requires an increasing strategic capability and acumen regarding effective school support systems that ensure sustainable school improvement over the longer term.

Case Study: A Cluster Approach to School Improvement – South Region Catholic Education South Australia (CESA)

In 2023, the South Region Schools Performance Leader of Catholic Education South Australia (CESA), recognised the opportunity for leadership development and enhanced school improvement in context to the challenges facing school leadership teams.

During our initial consultation regarding the best way to support schools within the region (i.e., work with individual schools or work with a cluster of schools), it became apparent that between these schools, there was tremendous goodwill and a deep commitment to inter-school collaboration.

As Dufour and Fullan state “When individual school principals become almost as concerned with the success of other schools as they are with their own school… a sense of systemness is taking hold”(2), thus a cluster program approach was adopted involving each school’s wider leadership team. Participation in the South Region Cluster Schools Program were 14 schools of varying size and demographic.?

These 14 schools engaged in our 12-month Leading Flourishing Schools cluster program. The 12-month cluster program has 3 distinct stages with each school having a customised school support plan that enabled bespoke support throughout each stage to maximise school specific outcomes. The tailored school support elements were a flexible mix of Individual Executive Coaching, Group Performance Coaching, Deep Dive Webinars, School Visits & Staff Professional Learning Programs.

Results: Increased Collective Efficacy in Catholic Schools

There was notable improvement in Collective Team Efficacy (CTE) of participating cluster schools across the program (see Diagram 1). Schools not only averaged an improvement in CTE of 10% from pre-test to post-test, but their average CTE scores were well above the Australian School Norms.

While participating schools from the CESA South Region Cluster reported that all elements of the program were beneficial (consistent with 600+ schools worldwide who have previously completed the program), there were 4 distinct improvement opportunities every participating school benefited from to lift their school’s performance and support the CESA vision for young people to be ‘thriving people, capable learners, leaders for the world God desires.’(3) We firmly believe these 4 Pillars of Opportunity may be beneficial for all Catholic Schools across Australia.

The 4 Pillars of Opportunity for Catholic School Leaders

1. A Management Support System & Collaboration Map that adheres to “The Rule of Three”

It is widely agreed among researchers that human beings have a finite number of working relationships they can effectively attend to before they reach maximum capacity.? A widely accepted figure for ‘reasonableness’ is the number 150(4) which accounts for both work and non-work relationships (with this number diminishing when we are compromised or stressed).?

In schools, we are often expecting teachers to collaborate with an ever-increasing number??? of??? teams??? and??? groups? –?? their teaching team, literacy improvement group, student support group etc.? In addition to this, our teachers are expected to have strong relationships with their students and families to build a connected community. Finally, we also expect teachers to be able to work with a range of different members of the school leadership team across different issues.

When schools inadvertently design their management support systems and collaborative structures to encompass too many additional working relationships, they diminish the effectiveness of teacher-student relationships. One of the solutions to this problem that is within the control of every school leadership team is found within their School Wide Collaboration Map and Duty Manager Support System.

In our 14 case study schools, the benefits of further improvement on schoolwide collaboration structures and duty manager support systems were deemed to be a high priority by all school leadership teams and yielded immediate positive results based on staff feedback. During the initial stages of the program, school leaders worked on 4 key issues: (1) a tendency to try to work with every staff member; (2) a lack of clarity around communication channels and protocols that led to leaders double handling information and tasks; (3) teachers and support staff stating they were unsure about who was the ‘right’ person to talk to; and (4)? when drilling down to key accountabilities and line management within the leadership team, noticeable gaps, overlaps and points of confusion were evident.

Success Story 1: St John The Baptist Catholic School, Plympton

Principal Todd LaForgia and the leadership team at St John the Baptist Catholic School, Plympton, realised the enormous school improvement value of an effective schoolwide collaboration map with clear team and group allocations and clearly identified line managers and professional managers.

One of the early challenges they faced was recognising the limitations of encouraging all staff to report to any leader any time about anything that had been developed from an ethos of servant leadership. This noble intention when applied to a rapidly growing complex school system inadvertently overwhelmed the capacity of the school leadership team, detracting from their work as instructional leaders and at times creating mixed messages and points of confusion for staff despite their best intentions.? As they re-worked their leadership structure and clarified line management and professional manager reporting pathways they were able to: (a) increase the speed and quality of support provided to staff through clearer referral pathways and (b) innovate the use of professional reporting structures to create opportunities for teacher leader roles, enabling aspiring leader pathways to emerge – all the while streamlining communication and reducing the complexity of relationship management across the school.

The leadership team at St John the Baptist Catholic School were then able to share this work with other cluster schools, enabling every school to have a shared understanding of how clear and efficient collaboration can look in their schools, and how to share this with their staff to reduce double handling of tasks and ultimately cognitive load for all.

Schools across the cluster began to critically consider line management, strategic responsibility, professional management, and the work they were currently doing to deliver improved outcomes.? The answer to providing clarity sat in this conversation and the creation of their own Team Chart and Whole School Collaboration Map. Furthermore, understanding the alignment between the strategic priorities of their school and the improvement groups (or committees), provided a through-line for ensuring all staff played a critical role in the school improvement agenda whilst not being overcommitted.

2. A School Wide Communication Protocol and Duty Officer Roster

Schools are complex organisations. The processes of teaching and learning are stressful and the problems of managing this stress in the classroom are normal. However, when teacher and leader capacity is low, our ability to assess and respond to risk is hindered.

When staff capacity lowers (due to spikes in classroom behaviour etc.) higher risk is perceived and more urgent support is felt.? This results in higher ad hoc contact with the leadership team about both student and staff needs. This disrupts and increases the leaders’ overall workload, hindering the progress of school improvement and instructional leadership.

This misdiagnosis of risk and urgency and higher ad hoc contact of the leadership team is made worse if:

1.Staff themselves are not clear about the school’s Communication Protocols for communicating matters that are urgent or risky, and/or;

2.The leadership team does not have a Duty Officer system to rotate their leaders in triaging urgent and risky issues – overloading multiple leaders with variable response patterns.

The simple and effective solution to this problem is to implement a School Communication Protocol and Duty Officer Roster shared amongst the school leadership team.?

Success Story 2: Antonio Catholic School, Morphett Vale

At Antonio Catholic School, we supported Principal Anthony Garton and his team to develop and implement their School Communication and Duty Officer Protocol which allowed staff to manage risk and therefore minimise interruptions to the day.

Antonio APRIM, Kerry Cornelius reported that this protocol was instrumental in giving back time to the leadership team to engage in the important work of school improvement and instructional leadership. Antonio’s School Wide Communication Protocols were highlighted and shared with the cluster schools and became the blueprint for the other schools to adjust for their own school.?

3. A System of Matched Communication to Maximise Empathy & Support

John Hattie states that “Accomplishing the maximum impact on student learning depends on teams of teachers working together.”(6) As instructional leaders, Principals and school leaders strive to ensure that everyone in their school community has a voice and that there is a sense of justice for all staff. We know that working together in teams is more effective than working in ‘silos’, however knowing how to communicate with those in your team takes the positive impact of collaboration a step further.

A lack of understanding of how personality impacts on communication can be a contributing factor to workplace conflict, so when school leaders understand their own personality and communication preferences, they begin to better understand the Platinum Rule – do unto others as they would want it done unto them.(7)

School Leadership Teams within the cluster were led through a process of understanding their personality and communication preferences and how to improve communication with each other based on this knowledge.? As a starting point for learning how to create high performance teams that ensure all staff and students flourish, each school created their Leadership Team Profile that is used to support communication within the team. In addition to this, through understanding key words and phrases that are common for each colour preference, leaders were able to apply this knowledge when working with students, staff, and parents to support a positive conversation.

4. Leadership Team Meetings that are well structured, maximise input, optimise outcomes and synergise the wider school meeting cycle

John Hattie’s research has shown that Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE) has the highest effect size of all school strategies, to improve student outcomes. To support the increase of CTE in schools, teams must meet regularly and build systems and processes around how and why they meet.(8)

Leadership Team Meeting Purpose

In implementing this concept within the cluster schools, we supported leadership teams to use meeting structures that would help?? build?? CTE.?? When?? working? with? the cluster schools it was apparent that in each school, the Leadership Team and Quality & Performance Team (QPT) often differed in its makeup, however the purpose and function of these teams remained very clear (see Table below).

The School Wide Meeting Cycle

With Whole School Collaboration Maps in place, leadership teams using a structured agenda, and teams understanding how to communicate effectively using The Platinum Rule, school leaders identified a gap beginning to emerge regarding “when” staff would collaborate. Schools now had the “what” and “why” (Whole School Collaboration Map) and the “how” (structured agendas), they needed to create clarity around the “when”.? This paved the way for the development of a School Wide Meeting Cycle.

Success Story 3: St John the Apostle Parish School, Christies Beach

Using their strategic improvement plan, Principal Leanne Johansen and her leadership team determined what improvement groups (committees) would be necessary to support school improvement for 2024 and reviewed their Whole School Collaboration Map.

With this completed, the next step to ensure clarity for all staff regarding intentional, purposeful, and successful collaboration, was to establish a whole school meeting cycle.? This meeting cycle clearly identified how, when, and why every team would meet using a consistent, structured agenda.? The importance of this innovative system was shared more broadly with the cluster schools, who went on to customise their Termly meeting cycles for their own schools.

To understand the impact of productive, inclusive, and strategic systems in schools, "let’s just get clear!” When all staff in the organisation are clear about communication, collaboration, meeting schedules and expectations, the result is a reduction in cognitive load for our teachers and leaders leaving them with energy to focus on school improvement and quality teaching and learning that best supports students.

Bringing It Together: Opportunities For Improvement in

Australian Catholic Schools

?The significance of this cluster program in highlighting these 4 Pillars of Opportunity for all Catholic schools is substantial.? In undertaking this cluster work, we see Principals and school leaders implementing much needed structures to manage their teams to give individuals a voice and create more precision in their collaboration which has proven to be advantageous to staff harmony and improved work performance.? Clarity around routines reduced cognitive load, valuing each member of the school community.

Perhaps the most fitting way to bring this case study article to a close it to quote the CESA Blueprint For Change (2020) which states:? as “we generally have commonly agreed shared beliefs and understandings about the improvement of students’ spiritual and learning outcomes and, although there has been some shift to working collaboratively within some clusters, we cannot afford to act as 102 separate entities working feverishly but independently of each other.? Our students deserve the best that our system of schools can individually and collectively provide.”(9)

?Key References:

(1)200 Years Young Pastoral Letter on Catholic Education in Australia (Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, 2021).

(2)Cultures Built to Last (Dufour & Fullan, 2012).

(3)A Blueprint for Change (CESA, 2020).

(4)https://www.newscientist.com/definition/dunbars-number/

(5)Leading Flourishing Schools (4th Ed.) (Dr Pete Stebbins, PhD).

(6)Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximising Impact on Learning (Hattie, 2012).

(7)https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/flourishing-students-does-your-school-follow-platinum-stebbins/?trackingId=sb%2FjGqzLSEScLSUIrJqElw%3D%3D

(8)https://visible-learning.org/2018/03/collective-teacher-efficacy-hattie/

(9)A Blueprint for Change (CESA, 2020).