Leadership

This episode of our School Assembly podcast is all about policies and processes. Which documents are the responsibility of the Foundation Principal? Is there a template that schools work from? Our Series 3 Notre Dame P-12 Principal Dan McShea joins us from Queensland to share some of the planning that goes on behind the scenes at a new school.

In today’s School Improvement podcast, Professor John Munro explores leadership for the provision of gifted education. Drawing on themes from his book published by ACER Press, Leading Improvement for Gifted and Talented Students, Munro discusses what it takes to develop a vision, putting together an action plan, upskilling teachers and collaborating with the wider community. 

For the last 6 months, Series 3 of our School Assembly podcast has been following Dan McShea, Foundation Principal of Notre Dame P-12 College on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. The big day finally arrived, and in this episode Teacher Editor Jo Earp checks in with Dan on how that first day of the new school went.

The winner of the 2025 Global Teacher Prize has been announced. Mansour Al Mansour from Saudi Arabia has walked away with the US $1 million prize. One Australian teacher was a top 10 finalist this year – Brett Dascombe, a Senior Geography Teacher from Wavell State High School in Brisbane. In this special podcast episode, Brett shares how he exposes his students to real-world, project-based learning by embedding geospatial technologies like GIS, drones and remote sensing data into the geography curriculum.

‘Schools and educators are increasingly finding themselves operating beyond capacity. Like a web browser with way too many tabs open – we are overloaded. Simply adding more “good things” won't fix this.’ Our latest reader submission shares how ‘pruning’ programs and activities can help schools create space for what matters most.

In Teacher’s first reader submission of 2025, Brisbane-based senior educator Jessica J Griffin reflects on her own leadership practice and philosophy, and how this has changed over the course of her career – moving beyond authority to collaboration, empathy and resilience.

It’s a special, bumper episode of School Assembly as Teacher Editor Jo Earp chats to Dan McShea about setting the teaching direction, and also checks in on Ray Boyd and Rachael Lehr, who we followed in Series 1, and Series 2 principal Jo Camozatto to find out what’s been happening at their schools.

In our latest annual reader survey, we asked you what you love about your role. In our final infographic for 2024, we share some of the responses we received from school leaders.

In Series 3 of School Assembly we’ve been following Dan McShea, Foundation Principal of Notre Dame College on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. The P-12 college opens for the new school year in early 2025 – so it’s almost time for the keys to be handed over. In this episode we’re talking about the school building, landscaping and outdoor spaces.

Aspect runs autism-specific education programs in New South Wales and South Australia. In this Leadership Q&A, we speak to Joanne Tisdell – Principal of Aspect South East Sydney School – about supporting students on the autism spectrum, including curriculum content, collaborative partnerships and the design of teaching and learning spaces.