School leadership – setting up for a new school year

A successful school year begins long before students walk through the gates on the first day. Careful planning and preparation lay the foundation for strong teaching and learning, positive school culture, and sustained improvement throughout the year. In this article, Anthony Hockey, Principal of St Mary's Catholic Primary School in Williamstown, Victoria, shares how his school prepares for a successful start to each new year. From welcoming and transitioning new students, inducting staff and completing essential maintenance, to refining improvement priorities – the work begins well before the first bell rings. Here, he offers insights into the strategies and processes that help set the school up for success.

Schools operate on a continuous cycle from one year to the next. As one group of students leaves, the next group arrives. There is always an overlap between one year and the next. In fact, by the time one school year finishes, much of the work for the following year has already been underway for months. So, when does planning for the following year really begin?

It is difficult to put an exact date on it but, realistically, it begins at least 12 months before the new school year, and in some cases much longer.

Preparing for the transition of new students

If we start with our most important component – the students – that process can begin several years before a child even walks through the school gates. With online application processes, we regularly receive one or 2 applications for students 4 or 5 years before they are ready to start school. For most families, however, the enrolment process begins in the year before their child starts school.

In Australia the school year runs from January to December. This year, I allowed myself not to conduct any enrolment tours during the first week of school. After that, for the next 2 or 3 months, there are almost daily tours for families looking to enrol their children. We send our first round of offers in the first week of May, and by early April we are already starting to get a picture of what our enrolments might look like for the following year. Some schools do this much later in the year. Of course, families can change their minds, circumstances can change and new enrolments can come in, so sometimes it is late in the year before we can finally settle on our numbers.

Once a family accepts a position, the preparation of the student’s transition into school begins. We invite our new students to attend Storytime. This year, we held 4 sessions in Term 3 where children came into the school simply to listen to a story and take part in a short activity. In Term 4, these experiences become more classroom-based, giving the children a chance to begin to understand what school might look and feel like.

Our leaders also visit the local kindergartens to meet the children's teachers and, importantly, to see the children in their familiar environment. We read the reports provided by the kindergartens and send a survey to families based on the Australian Early Development Census to help build a more complete picture of each new student.

We also hold a session for parents, helping them understand how they can prepare their child for starting school. For some students, there is even more planning involved. We may speak with health specialists, paediatricians or psychologists to make sure the appropriate support systems are in place before the child starts. The aim is simple: when the child arrives, we want to be ready for them.

Preparing existing students

Our existing students have to be prepared for the following years as well. This can be broken down into 3 distinct areas: data, class lists and handover.

Data is the most important of these as the current teacher prepares summative data for the student. Like many schools we use many of the PAT assessments and other assessments to get an understanding of how the student has performed throughout the year. This data will be presented to parents through our school reports, assist with our student placements for the following year and used for handover for the next teacher of the student.

Class list placement has evolved over the years, and I doubt many schools use the old practice of student names on pieces of paper and manipulated manually into a class list. We use an external company that does the hard work for us. We input data about each child, friendship lists, academic data, gender, behavioural needs, levels of support, parent requests and some other factors into the program and it creates the class lists. We can still manipulate the lists, but if we move a child, it highlights problems – for example, no one from their friendship lists. We continue to work until we are satisfied with the lists.

Handover is the final step. Where possible the current teacher meets with the new teacher and exchanges information about the student with the new teacher. This will include academic data, behaviour and social and emotional data, and other important factors. The challenge is that the teacher may not know the student yet, so the data has no context – so the teachers may meet again the following year when they have met the student, so the handover has more meaning. If the new teacher is not available and the current teacher is leaving the school, a school leader will do the handover later.

Some students have extra needs and they may also spend some time preparing for their new classroom by visiting the new space, learning how to climb stairs, having a new social story, having handrails installed, or other physical factors that need to be present in a new classroom.

Preparing staff and completing essential maintenance

Of course, preparing for a new year is not only about students. We try to put as much as possible in place during the school year. Teachers are appointed, classes are formed and individual learning plans are developed. But some things inevitably happen during the summer break, when the school is quiet and the students are away.

New staff members are inducted into the school. Where possible, this occurs during the breaks, with leaders taking new staff through policies and procedures, showing them fire exits and evacuation points, explaining chemical registers and introducing them to the many practical aspects of working in the school.

Then there is the work that most people never see. The school needs to be physically prepared. There is a deep clean. Windows are washed. Carpets are steam cleaned. Air conditioners are checked and cleaned. There is painting, maintenance, plumbing, electrical work and repairs. My school is in a heritage-listed building, so there is always something that needs attention when you are looking after an older building.

Our technology company also works through much of the summer, cataloguing new technology and carrying out work on servers, switches and other systems. The summer break provides an opportunity to turn systems off for extended periods – something that is much harder to do when students and staff are moving through the school every day.

There is ‘Test and Tag’. The artificial grass receives its annual maintenance. And, as a principal, while on holiday, this can mean receiving phone calls from tradies and contractors asking questions such as where the keys are, how to turn off the alarm or what they should do about the unexpected problem they have just discovered.

Educational planning and improvement priorities

While all of this is happening, there is also the educational planning. The leadership team will meet during the summer break to discuss the school's improvement priorities and the Annual School Improvement Plan for the year ahead. First term staff meetings are planned, the first staff day is organised and the professional learning program is developed.

Classrooms are checked to make sure they have enough furniture, resources and supplies. Orders are followed up. Everything possible is done to make sure that when the students arrive, the school is ready.

And then, almost inevitably, something goes wrong. There is usually a crisis – storm damage. A broken window. Vandalism. Something missing from an order. A staff member becoming unwell. A last-minute enrolment. These things are dealt with as they arise, with the aim of causing as little disruption as possible to the start of the school year.

A focus on school improvement

Behind all of this is another important layer of planning: deciding what the school needs to improve. Our key priorities are established through our Annual School Improvement Plan. This does not happen in isolation. We look at our 4-year improvement plan and evaluate the initiatives and work that have taken place.

We look at data. We consider demographic data, student learning data, process data and perception data. How did our students perform? What does the learning data tell us? How are our processes working? What did our staff, students and families think about the year? What does our student population look like for the year ahead? Do we have increasing numbers of students and families for whom English is an additional language? Do we have students requiring extensive levels of support? Do we have a balance of gender across the school? Are there particular areas of learning that need greater attention?

All of these things contribute to determining where we place our energy and resources for the following year.

Some final thoughts

So, when does the school year end and when does the next one begin? Perhaps there is not really a clear answer. The school year does not simply finish when the students walk out the gates on the last day of Term 4. Nor does it begin when they return on the first day of Term 1. There is a constant overlap.

While we are teaching this year's students, we are already thinking about next year's students. While we are preparing for the end of the year, we are planning for the beginning of the next. While one cohort is saying goodbye, another is already being welcomed.

And somewhere amongst all of that planning, organising, fixing, meeting, emailing and problem-solving, there has to be a moment to stop. At some stage, we need to turn the emails off, shut down the computer and give ourselves permission to step away. We need to breathe.

Because, for as much as there is always something else to do, I’ve learned that if we do not take that break, we will not be able to lead our schools well. We will not have the energy, perspective or patience that our students, staff and families deserve.