Last month, we announced the impressive list of Teacher Awards 2024 winners. Across our 8 categories, we celebrated teachers, leaders, and members of the wider community who are making a difference in K-12 education.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll be profiling the winners. Today, we speak to Georgia Bate, Learning Specialist at MacRobertson Girls’ High School in Victoria, and winner of the Improving Student Learning and Progress Award for 2024.
At Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School in Melbourne, data is the magic word. Whether it’s looking at student wellbeing and confidence, or insights from formal assessments such as student NAPLAN results, ‘Mac.Rob’ is putting the data to good use. Something that Learning Specialist Georgia Bate has been recognised for in this year’s Teacher awards.
‘My principal says, “data collected is only as good as data used,”’ she laughs.
Bate’s efforts to take the countless pieces of data the school possesses, bring it all together in one place, and then utilise it to improve student outcomes through an evidence-based, ‘no assumptions’ approach, has seen her named this year’s Improving Student Learning and Progress Award winner.
Open to an individual or team of educators, this award celebrates success in improving learning and progress for students, regardless of their starting point – something highlighted by our Judging Panel.
The nomination provides evidence of Georgia’s impact on student learning at a leadership and classroom level. Importantly, Georgia uses a range of evidence to support learning and target teaching to meet individuals at their starting points and contributes to whole school improvements. She supports and coaches colleagues in improving learning. (Teacher Awards 2024 judging panellist).
‘It means the world to me.’ Bate says of the Awards recognition. ‘[The judges are] people that I've looked up to for years and I've read their work, and for them to then look at my work is really humbling.
‘Mum and Dad have been teachers for, like, 30 years each, so they’re really stoked for me.’
Data storytelling
While the award nomination celebrated her in-class teaching and her willingness to help colleagues with their own professional development, thus improving teaching and learning standards overall, it’s Bate’s role in driving ‘data storytelling’ at Mac.Rob that most impressed.
Dr Selena Fisk, whose work Bate quotes as inspiration for her own approach, encourages educators to firstly think about the trends and insights in the data, and then what are they going to do about those trends and insights.
‘We initially came from a place where the data was quite separate,’ says Bate. ‘We actually said, “are we just looking at one chapter of a whole story?”’
For Bate and Mac.Rob, those chapters include ‘… things like your NAPLAN, your PAT, … entrance data … all the way down to things like student wellbeing, their attendance, their sick bay attendance.’
By bringing it all together, staff start to get a better idea of who the student really is and how best to respond. At Mac.Rob, this is facilitated through regular student summits, where teachers of the same student come together and discuss what they are seeing and how best to move forward.
‘We’re telling a story of a whole person, not just “this is what I'm responsible for in my classroom,”’ Bate explains.
Students as ‘agents of their own story’
Bate is quick to stress that the students themselves are one of the most important data sources educators have. ‘When we collected this data, we were then going forward to the student and inquiring and actually going through and seeing “what more can we learn from them as a data source as well?” … we shared our findings with them … we actually included them. So, that was the other part of the puzzle – that they had to be agents of their own story.’
In doing so, students can help teachers understand what they are seeing, for example, by contextualising patterns around repeated absences or sick bay attendance. Students also felt that seeing the data helped them understand their own thoughts and feelings.
‘We actually got the student and said: “this is what's coming up, what do you see … what do you think?” And they oftentimes [said], “oh, my God, this is describing what I felt, this is describing why I'm having trouble, I finally have the language and the data to prove why I'm struggling with this concept.”
In-class support
Once staff have the data to inform their teaching approach, Mac.Rob’s team-teaching model allows support to be brought into the classroom, rather than removing students from class to access what they need.
‘… it wasn't that we're going to take them out and put them in a different class … we're bringing people in and including them in a really meaningful way,’ Bate reflects.
With a student demographic that is around 85% non-English background, that is particularly important for staff at Mac.Rob, as it allows everyone to be taught the same content by scaling the support students are given.
‘If you do have a structure where your EAL learners are taken out of the classroom, maybe see about opportunities … that can bring them in because the implicit messaging is that they’re othered and it's actually excluding them from the community.’
Seeing the results
Mac.Rob’s shift to being more data-led and data-informed – alongside collaboration with Mac.Rob’s Wellbeing team and other successful initiatives – is already leading to improvements in student learning. There’s been student growth across a range of metrics, from achievement data to wellbeing and confidence – areas Bate says are equally important. ‘It's about actually supporting students from their point of need … [we’re] developing whole people.’
The Teacher Awards will be back for 2025! The Awards recognise work that’s been completed in the past 12 months, so it’s not too early to start thinking about your nomination for next year. You can browse the specific criteria for this award, and the other 7 categories, here.
Think about the data available to you in your own context. How do all these pieces of the puzzle inform your own practice, and the support offered to students and families?
Schools are often data-rich, but they don’t always know how to best use the data they have. As a school leader, do your staff have the skills to effectively source and use data? What are their professional development needs in this area?
This award celebrates success in improving learning and progress for students, regardless of their starting point. Consider how you do this in your own school context. How do you support students to meet their full potential?