School leaders

A systematic review of research from the past two decades has investigated the link between leadership and learning to analyse how principals affect student learning and overall school culture. Here, we look at the skills displayed by principals that have emerged to have a positive effect on schools.

The findings of Australia’s annual snapshot of principal health and wellbeing have just been released. And, if you’re an educator you won’t be surprised to hear that ‘extremely long hours and constant exposure to stress’ left school leaders exhausted in 2020, as first fires, then floods, then a pandemic pushed them to their limits.

How do schools successfully engage and retain students alongside promoting academic achievement? In today’s reader submission Margaret Gurney, Assistant Director-General, State Schools Operations at the Queensland Department of Education, shares research findings on practices common in high performing schools.

Reducing the disparities in the schooling experiences of students was one of the issues identified by Teacher columnist Professor Geoff Masters AO in his influential series on the ‘big five’ education challenges facing Australian schools. What does the latest evidence say, and where do we go to from here?

What would happen if you listened to your staff and students about what their reality is like, and then wrote a school-wide wellbeing framework and curriculum that responded specifically to their needs? At Indie School Elizabeth in South Australia, a targeted approach to addressing the complex wellbeing needs of students led to a brave reimagining of staff wellbeing strategies and processes.

The Knox School has been working with academics to research what teachers learned from the lockdown experience. In this final article of a three-part series, middle leader Melodie Matheson shares how teacher wellbeing became a transformative influence on her leadership.

The Knox School has worked with Monash University to research what teachers would like to take forward (and leave behind) from the remote learning experience. Three key areas of change were identified. This second article in a series focuses on school community collaboration.

In the final installment of our three-part series on small group tutoring, we discuss what effective small group tutoring looks like in practice, the importance of building relationships with students, and why students need to be at the centre of this work.

Teacher caught up with Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills at the OECD, to talk about how schools have coped with the challenges of 2020. In this video, he shares how different countries around the world ensured teaching and learning continued during COVID-19.

Pamela Macklin and Vic Zbar have just released an updated second edition of Driving School Improvement: Practical strategies and tools. In this Q&A they discuss a common improvement challenge faced by leaders, and share examples of how different schools are meeting this challenge.