Ballajura Community College - Independent Public School

Ballajura Community College

The first 34 schools to be empowered with greater freedom to make decisions best suited to the needs of their students and local communities have been announced. Ballajura Community College was successful in its application and we are extremely excited about the possibilities this opportunity offers the College community.

The Minister's announcement can be viewed

here, along with a list of other successful schools.

Ballajura Community College seeks your endorsement for its nomination as an Independent Public School. Extensive consultation has taken place within the College community, inclusive of staff and the BCC Council at which time there has been full support and endorsement of the nomination.

The College’s stated mission is “Creating the future together….” And this is the starting point for the Independent Public School status which Ballajura Community College is seeking. It is this mission that drives the College’s quality learning and teaching program, creates the strong positive spirit evident and acknowledged in the College and promotes consistent expectations from class to class about the high expectations held for the learning outcomes of each student and the type of pedagogy that is employed. The College has received outstanding school reports from respective Directors of Schools and has achieved academic excellence in having a 100% graduation rate of its students for four successive years. The College has been also acknowledged as a top government school by the Minister for Education and the Director General in successive years.

The challenge afforded by your initiative is that it will allow the College to become an incubator for innovations and ideas that will be able to inform education practice in government schooling in general. By far this is its most attractive dimension of the Independent Public School initiative; that it will facilitate and encourage research and development in the learning and teaching enterprises and encourage innovative thinking. By exploring new ways of doing business it will serve to inform DET and the public education system generally in aspects related to boosting the learning and teaching endeavour, management and accountability structures, staff selection and deployment, resource usage and many other areas.

Initially it is foreshadowed that a service compact (charter) would be developed within the College’s community and with the Department of Education and Training and this will be reflected in both the College plan and negotiated accountability requirements, including qualitative and quantitative value adding information and annual reporting documentation. Ballajura Community College has a demonstrated capacity both in terms of leadership and infrastructure to deliver the desired articulated outcomes for the Independent Public School in terms of student achievement.

Further, there are significant opportunities and benefits identified in terms of staffing appointments, management and structures in both teaching and non-teaching areas that can be achieved that will enable expertise to be fully exploited to achieve maximum student learning outcomes. However, some significant change to existing practice will be required. The College being assigned a budget for its F.T.E, both teaching and support which can be accessed directly by the school has the potential to significantly increase efficiency and staff morale. Such a process will ensure the effectiveness and overall efficacy of both the College’s pedagogy and curriculum provision.

Accountability is seen to incorporate a dimension of “publicly demonstrated responsibility”. It is a dynamic not static process. It is recognised that there is an increased obligation for the College to explain and justify how it has used and/or applied the responsibility derived from ‘its Independent Public School status’ and its resources in the achievement of agreed outcomes. Accountability is seen as a continuous process of open negotiation, reviews and adjustment which is focused on improved student outcomes with the principal demonstrating how the programs, school structures and school management organisation have made an impact on student learning; the extent to which they have added value to a student’s learning journey. This requires that they demonstrate that the school is performing effectively and efficiently in terms of the quality of the Colleges’ learning and teaching programs and in line with the Classroom First vision.

For Ballajura Community College quality assurance is seen to be a process of ensuring that effective accountability reporting is in place so as to achieve maximum educational outcome improvement. The College has achieved outstanding feedback on external measures applied and annual reports on its performance have been exemplary and highly praiseworthy. Therefore for the College the accountability role involving the Director General (or nominee) is seen to be initially one that involves the negotiation of key performance areas over which it has some control. A significant aspect of this role will be achieved therefore by concentrating on those processes in place at the school level to measure and report on its value adding to student learning outcomes with both qualitative and quantitative information provided as evidence.

Greater devolution of responsibility to the College will place a premium on accountability, and changes the purpose school evaluation, in terms of the checking and balancing processes that are in place. To this end the Director General’s nominee is regarded as the link between the school, as an individual entity, and the system as a whole.

The College already has a governing structure that is the Ballajura Community College Council (Incorporated) that involves parents, teachers, community and business representation. The College Council operates as a school board in all but name. Independent Public School status will allow negotiated flexibility in terms of for example, budget allocations, staff selections, pedagogy employed, organisation structures, structure of the school day, parent contracts, curriculum exit expectations for each year and ongoing homework/tutoring support for students. Many of the initiatives as specified in the Unlock Your School’s Future documentation are already in place in the College, including local selection, faults management, strategic plan and annual reporting processes.

Appropriately from what the College curriculum requires, the pedagogy employed and how it allocates time and people to learning and teaching and support tasks should underpin the structure of the school day. The aim would be to have the freedom to enter discussion with stakeholder groups to explore ways to structure the school day in such a way as to allow

· For the creation of maximum time and desired flexibility to help with the delivery of the Curriculum.

· Timetabling of vocational courses involving staff from across the College and TAFE personnel. (Both short term advantages and real opportunities for longer term gains).

· The opportunity for ‘extra-curricular’ activities and organisation of student at risk programs and inclusive education program.

· The increased potential for collaborative work across the College and ability to support other schools in the district with curriculum delivery (multi-mode delivery).

· The increased possibilities for the provision of effective staff development opportunities.

· Capacity to relieve pressure on staff by focusing curriculum meetings on flexible learning and teaching delivery and professional learning.

Ballajura Community College has extant local selection status which has been used to great effect in attracting and securing staff that ascribe to its vision and ethos. The Independent Public School status underpins the type and quality of the learning and teaching program to which the College has long aspired. For example it is perceived that there will be a raft of staffing processes that will be enhanced through Independent Public School status that would facilitate the College:

· Having the ability to match staff with the its ethos and culture. Attracting staff who ascribe to the Colleges vision and articulated direction and expectations.

· Being able to make timely appointment offers to appropriate staff, especially the facility to make position offers and to secure staff ahead of LSL and other leave periods.

· Addressing issues relating to placement requests and the direct entry of information on to the payment system improving staff morale as a by product.

There are significant benefits foreshadowed in the College having greater control and accountability for its staff selection, appointment and management processes that would enhance the quality of learning and teaching endeavour and allow for its growth as an educational organisation.

The Independent Public School status would be enabling in terms of facilitating alternative structures for support staff allocation and accessibility. College processes could be streamlined in terms of support staff selection to provide greater efficiency while still meeting statutory requirements as outlined in the documentation supplied.

The College is well prepared to take responsibility for its own establishment. Ideally the College would administer its own payroll documentation which would mean the need for its staff to have access to HRMIS or similar software/programs. It is recognised some resourcing for support staff training would be necessary. This move alone would overcome the significant delays and inappropriate payments which adversely affect staff morale.

The Ballajura Community College Council is a very active and effective aspect of the College’s planning and accountability paradigm and as such it is well placed to implement the thrust of the Independent Public School initiative. It is an essential aspect of good governance that clear boundaries are established between the overall governance of the College, which is the responsibility of its Council, and the day-to-day leadership and operation of the College, which is the responsibility of the Principal and senior executive team members. The success of the College in its learning and teaching endeavours depends largely on the relationships that exist between its key stakeholder groups. There is widespread support for this nomination from staff and the community. The College council adopted unanimously a motion to seek nomination as an Independent Public School and this has been recorded in the minutes of its July meeting.

I trust that this response gives substance to the initial formal request for inclusion as an Independent Public School.