July 2022 Newsletter

• Ongoing promotion of ACP Connect App and Website - https://acpconnect.com.au/
• Ongoing CaSPA Conference Registration - Early Bird promotion - https://consec.eventsair.com/caspa-2022/registration
• Connecting with Associations Forum to access benefits for caSPA and its governance.
• ACARA Principal Peak Stakeholder Meeting – Version 9 Australian Curriculum update was provided. More details are available eon the ACARA Website.
• Consulting with Australian Catholic University (ACU) to confirm partnership with CaSPA to support the Australian Principal Health and Wellbeing research during 2022.
• Finalised the agreement with new Partners – Box of Books
• Finalised the CaSPA Award Certificates with Brighton Trophy Centre
• Communicating with Neil Carrington to facilitate the 2023 – 2025 CaSPA Strategic Plan
• Congratulations message to Jason Clare as the new Minister for Education
• Online Meeting with International Confederation of Principals (ICP) Regional Council meeting in Singapore this September. Planning for the 2023 ICP Conference has commenced.

Dr Briony Scott's message to the sector

By Sarah Duggan
Published June 6, 2022

She bears the same weight of academic credentials as a surgeon, but still principal Dr Briony Scott is told how her job must be done by those outside the profession. And she has had enough.

“No one would walk into an operating theatre and go, ‘Oh, I think you should change the colour of the walls, and had you thought about, I don't know, saving the life of a patient? Or, ‘I don’t really think you should use that scalpel, why don't you use this butter knife over here? We have to claim [our professional agency] back and just say, ‘Enough. We actually do know what we're doing.'"

The long-serving principal of Wenona School in Sydney says she’s experienced enough during the last few pandemic-tainted years to learn that the time is now for school leaders and teachers to stand up for their expertise.

Tired of having to execute decisions that are “being made by people who don’t know how schools work” and are blind to the “complexity of juggling communities,” Scott is calling for systemic change.

“I remember a number of years ago, one of the education ministers said, ‘Right, we're going to [have] a revolution, we're going to all focus on reading and writing’.

“And I thought, ‘Oh, here's an idea I hadn't thought of that, thank you for letting me know' – what do you think we do here on a daily basis? Have you stepped foot in a school? You have no idea about the discipline and the professional work that goes into refining our craft."

Speaking with EducationHQ ahead of her keynote address at the Australian Schools Women’s Leadership Summit last week, Scott says most educators she knows are “desperately” trying to connect and learn from each other.

“I'm wanting to know what's happening in other schools. I don't care if it's a regional school, a rural school, an inner-city school, there is so much that I can learn from whomever I come across,” she adds.

To the new Labor Government in particular, Scott has a clear message. “You have to understand people who are involved in education, we love education; we're not in it for the money. We love it because we love what we do. It's a calling.

“These are extraordinary people that we're talking about, and they need to not be treated like children themselves, but be given the respect and the dignity of being able to engage in professional conversations about the future of their profession.”

Scott says she’s driven to do what she does because she has seen the ‘genuinely powerful force’ that education can be.

“I remember many years ago, I was studying here, and education when I first started was always seen as the poorer cousin ...There was always this sense that it was a second-rate profession. Now, not everyone will agree with me, but certainly when I went through there were high-prestige careers, and there were not-so-high (careers) and teaching was a not-so-high one.”

“This is such an honourable profession, it is absolutely a calling and there's so much you can do if you can understand the power of education, if you can understand that it's not about us versus them, or what grade you get, or anything like that. It's about genuinely putting in a foundation to someone's life: that no matter what happens to them down the track, they can navigate their way through and make informed choices about what they want to do with their own lives rather than having other people tell it to them. So do not ever underestimate the power of going into education as a career,” Scott advises.

Being a principal, she says, is “one of the best jobs on the planet”. But in her time at the helm of Wenona, and previously at Roseville College in Sydney, she’s learnt that there is no real "glory per se" in school leadership.

“You lose the right to be offended. Your job all the time is to take the high road and to work out a way through – there's always got to be a way through. You don't get to polarise, you don't get to sit in your corner of the boxing ring and sulk.”

The call of leadership in schools is different to that in the corporate world, Scott says.

“If I’m a leader in a computer company, I can influence my employees, I can perhaps influence the customers, that's it. In schools, you have a thousand pairs of eyes watching you every second of the day. You have to have integrity, you don't have to be perfect, because things can go wrong, but you have to know that what you say and what you do match up. Because if they don't, you do not last – you will not survive and your ability to influence or to impact the lives of others is just undermined."

In short, it’s not about you – it’s what you do to move others forward, she says.

“Sometimes that actually does mean you have to make really tough decisions about people because there are consequences to actions, and you have to have this moral code or this understanding of character that means you don't get swayed by any particular situation.”

Good leadership isn’t driven by a pervading need to have everybody love you, Scott concludes. 

“...you have to be prepared to absorb the rubbish and to deflect the glory. So when the good times come, it's everybody else, when the bad times come, that's you – so what are you going to do about it?”

Source: EducationHQ.com