Leadership

This term, thousands of 15-year-olds around Australia are sitting PISA – showing how they can apply their knowledge and skills to real-life problems and situations. Here, we look at what’s new for the 2025 cycle of this global assessment, and how teachers and leaders can use PISA insights to inform their own practice and drive school improvement.

Teacher Editor Jo Earp is joined by Dan McShea, Foundation Principal of Notre Dame P-12 College in Queensland, for the final episode in Series 3 of our School Assembly podcast series, where we have been following Dan’s journey as he builds a new school from the ground up. 

UNESCO’s 2024/25 Global Education Monitoring Report on leadership education includes a gender edition, exploring the gender gaps in school management, education administration and political leadership positions around the world, and the obstacles women face when climbing the leadership ladder in education. It proposes 3 sets of integrated recommendations.

In today’s article, Rachael Lehr, Associate Principal at Dayton Primary School in Western Australia shares her advice on how to set the tone for a new school term to get the best out of your students and staff. From creating positive relationships, to setting high expectations and revisiting routines, Rachael shares what has worked in her school setting.

We’ve reached the penultimate episode of Series 3 of our podcast series School Assembly. Teacher editor Jo Earp talks to Notre Dame P-12 College Principal Dan McShea about distributed leadership and developing a leadership pipeline in a new school. Dan also shares his biggest challenge, key learning and proudest achievement since last month’s episode. 

This episode of our School Assembly podcast is all about professional learning. Our Series 3 Principal Dan McShea joins us from Queensland’s Notre Dame P-12 College to share how it links back to strategic planning and key teaching and learning documents. We’ll also find out about his biggest challenge, key learning and proudest achievement since we caught up last.

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.

‘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.