2 September 2019

Newsletter Articles

President’s Report

WAESPAA Funding

Our Minister for Education and Training, Hon. Sue Ellery made the announcement that our association will receive additional funding to continue the work we are doing. At our next executive meeting we will discuss exactly how these funds can be best utilised. I will inform members once the decision has been made.

Alison Ramm & Enrolment Guidelines

Alison Ramm will be attending our next executive meeting (Monday 9th September) to listen to the changes we are requesting with regards to the enrolment guidelines. I am hopeful that this conversation will get some traction and we can make the necessary changes!

Local Placement Arrangements

I have received a letter from Kellie Properjohn, Executive Director, Statewide Services in response to concerns I raised with her regarding local placement enrolments and arrangements in our settings. In this letter she states that;

“the DSS school psychology consultants provide support for complex case management where the student has a diagnosed or imputed disability. Consultations are provided in the areas of;

• Assessment and reporting of disability
• Eligibility for disability resourcing
• Level of student educational need and appropriate educational options; and
• Access to support serves… DSS do not make any decisions relating to local placement.. Decisions about enrolment and endorsement of local placements is managed by schools and the region”

Kellie went onto say “Local placement enrolment is a decision requiring endorsement from the local Lead School Psychologist and the Regional Executive Director.”

I have responded to this asking for clarification regarding this last point. It reads that we, as principals are unable to enrol a student (on a local placement) without the endorsement of our LSP and RED, therefore a Principal cannot enrol a student on a LP. I will also ask for clarification with Allison Ramm at our meeting.

School Transport – NDIS

Last week I met with Elizabeth Roberts and Paul Read to discuss points for consideration in WA if the NDIS envelope transport services. There is another consultation process that will be done throughout Australia. Although the discussion was very similar to last year there were a number of other considerations to take into account. These included;

• Can the demand be met – especially in regional and remote areas?
• Potentially every school in the state will be impacted – how will Principals be informed?
• What are the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder? (family, school, Transport organisation, NDIS)
• If a child changes schools and transport needs change is there scope for interim funding?

These were considerations that came out as being different to ones that were mentioned last year. Consultation will commence in the coming weeks with families, schools, NDIS organisations and other community groups.

Worksafe inspections

Please see the attached letter indicating that Worksafe will commence random inspections.

Principal Retention

This week I met with The Minister of Education and Training Hon. Sue Ellery, Lisa Rodgers, Stephen Baxter and the unions and associations to discuss Principal retention and the idea of Lead Principals and their roles. At present an idea being floated is that Lead Principals will have the sole role of supporting Principals in schools. They will be based in all regions and be available for Principals to call, or vice versa and seek advice and clarification. Lead Principals will be offline, and will return to their school after a period (2 year suggestion). If you have the opportunity to give feedback into this, please do as it is a space the Minister and DG are interested in exploring.

Feedback for DG

As I mentioned at conference I had the opportunity to meet with Dandolo Partners. They are a consultancy group who have been invited by our Director General Lisa Rodgers to meet with representatives and listen to feedback about what is important from each of our sectors. I was invited to represent WAESPAA and I was in the panel discussion with James Milne – who is the President of WADSHA, which is the Western Australian District High School Association, James is also a full time substantive Principal of Donnybrook DHS. The panel asked us to discuss our context a little, and asked numerous questions and then left the floor open to us for an hour to discuss what the biggest issues are in our sector. From a WAESPAA perspective I discussed;

• The future of standalone special schools, and education support centres – are they a model of the past?
• Enrolment guidelines – and the desperate requirement to have these rewritten
• Wellbeing and retention of Principals – It is difficult to attract people into our sector let alone quality educators into our sector who are aspiring and inspirational
• The larger scope Statewide services are encompassing – and the difficulties our sector has in seeking assistance from Statewide.
• The omitance of procedure/policy for students with disabilities. I gave the example of OINS and the Violence in Schools conversations – in may documents there is a small declaimer stating that if a student has a disability, or the situation has arisen because of the manifestation of their disability then they are excluded from this procedure/policy. Principals are left to act as they see fit with very little support – and for us this is 100% of our population that fit into this category.

We were only scheduled for an hour so James and I spoke very quickly. I did emphasize the point though that the students that are enrolled in our centres and schools are at the extensive end of disability. We enrol those students who usually cannot be accommodated well in any other setting, and therefore unless you have a deep understanding of our setting it would be very difficult to compare our settings with any other school settings.

Regards

Natalie Hatton
President WAESPAA
Principal Joondalup Education Support Centre

Aspirant Members

This will be the last Aspirant Leaders PL for the year.

Nick Burnett - Comfortable Uncomfortable Conversations

This interactive workshop will share a number of frameworks and tools to help participants narrow the intention impact gap that often occurs during tricky conversations. It will also explore what’s happening from a neuroscience perspective and further develop participants Conversational Intelligence.

Booking link :

Limited places, so be quick to book in!

Planning for 2020 has already commenced. If you have a particular need or suggestions for the next series of professional learning, please email Jodie.Norwell@education.wa.edu.au

Kind regards,
Jodie Norwell
Aspirant Portfolio

WAESPAA Connected Partners

Inspiration Leadership Conference

“100 Stories of School” - Masterclass

This was a change from what has previously happened on the country day of conference and the overwhelming feedback was that everyone loved the masterclass. We had in the end 29 delegates go to Carson Street School for the day and work with Ewan McIntosh and his team on the power of our own stories. This is some of the feedback

“Gave a new way of thinking on how the power of stories can impact on my context. The benefits really resonated rather than the features, the point of difference”

“Took things about communication that I thought I knew to another level.”

Inspirational Leadership

The full conference was held at a new venue this year the Pan Pacific Hotel. We had a range of keynote speakers Ewan McIntosh, Ben Aldridge, Jenny Cole, David Koutsoukis, Nick Burnett as well as representation from the Department of Education and the Minister Hon Sue Ellery. The feedback from the conference has been great.

“An excellent conference! So good to have it devoted to leadership and it was truly inspirational. Also very relevant to everyone's context.”

“I loved the master class. It set the scene for the following 2 days and all the following sessions I attended were great. I think the venue was better than last year and the service, catering etc. were great too. Thank you :) can’t wait for next year :)”

“Loved venue! Program lived up to its inspirational title, great time year to place food for thought for 2020 planning,”

We are continuing to work with No Tosh to see how we can develop more support for WAESPAA schools to keep an eye out for it.

Showcase

The Showcase had 23 different schools showcasing this year and we had just over 200 delegates. The showcase opened with a wonderful acknowledgement to country from Dianella ESC and by Matthew Johnson who is the President of ASEPA.

A full conference wrap-up report will be available very soon. But a final thank you to the Conference Team Ros Hamling, Paul Jones and Ralph Gurr who helped me run such a wonderful three days.

Inspiration Leadership Conference 2019

WAESPAA Awards Night – 15th November 2019

The link to secure your table of ten or tables of ten for the WAESPAA Awards night is now live.

There are 8 awards this year:

1. School of the Year
2. Leadership
3. Manager of Corporate Services and Support Staff
4. Non Teaching Primary
5. Teaching Primary
6. Non Teaching Secondary
7. Teaching Secondary
8. Early Career Teacher

The nomination forms can be found on the following link.

PTCWA

Dear Colleagues

Below is an invitation from the UNAAWA Schools Program Director Rees Barrett.

Have you come across any teachers doing innovative work with the Global Goals or Global Citizenship Education? If so, we would love to see them nominated for the 2019 World Teachers' Day Awards. We would appreciate it if you could share through your network the following information and attachments about the UNAAWA 2019 World Teachers' Day Awards and UN Day Gala Evening.

Flyer and nomination forms attached. Please share. Even better, please nominate if appropriate.

In a turbulent and uncertain world our youngsters need great teachers more than ever! Nominate now for the 2019 World Teachers' Day Awards.

For more information Email: gcs@unaa-wa.org.au <mailto:gcs@unaa-wa.org.au>

Kind Regards
Barb Lippiatt
Executive Officer
PTCWA
Mob: 0400 238 174

International Confederation of Principals (ICP)

The International Confederation of Principals (ICP) is the global association of School Leaders Associations. WAESPAA members are members of this Global Association through WAESPAA’s membership to our national association. ICP have many new initiatives to benefit you and your school.

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