Support educators to assist our students

Birchip P-12 School principal John Richmond has spent the past 41 years as a key part of the school’s community.

His commitment to education won him formal recognition in 2017 when he received the prestigious peer-nominated John Laing Award by the Principals of Australia Institute.

Mr Richmond, as a member of Wimmera Southern Mallee Regional Partnership, has provided his thoughts on opportunities to improve education outcomes for students in the Wimmera and southern Mallee.

Improving education outcomes is one of the themes attendees will highlight at the regional partnership’s third Regional Assembly, at Stawell Town Hall on May 30. Here is Mr Richmond’s opinion piece –

As educators in rural communities we face unique challenges in our endeavours to provide our students with the knowledge and skills they will need to follow their chosen path.

In small communities, schools tend to be the main government service provider.

Our students and their families might not have ready access to allied health, social and wellbeing services, and it can fall on schools and our staff to support families in many and varied ways.

This places more pressure on our already stretched schools, resources and staff.

Further to this, decreasing populations in our already small rural communities, along with our distance from Melbourne and other regional centres, makes it difficult to attract and retain excellent teaching professionals, particularly in the areas of mathematics and science.

Small schools are getting critically small and, consequently, we need to consider alternative education delivery models that will help us with recruitment and to better support our teachers and students.

This might include options such as schools considering and exploring federation models and the possible sharing of business managers, occupational health and safety officers, technology experts and coverage principals.

We also need to consider the integration of services, for example, centres that can deliver early childhood services, maternal and child health, long day care, kindergarten, primary and secondary schooling, and even some Technical And Further Education, TAFE, options.

Currently rural principals, teachers and education support staff are overloaded.

We lack support services and the ability to collaborate easily.

Distances and remoteness continue to be an issue and we need to network strongly to assist graduate teachers, ongoing teachers and principals to collaborate and grow.

It is time we take a serious look at ways we can retain our staff by supporting their professional development and finding opportunities for promotion.

Mentoring is one way we can achieve this, with, for example, more experienced principals helping new principals to achieve positive outcomes for their school communities.

Later this month, the Wimmera Southern Mallee Regional Partnership will host its third Regional Assembly and one of the key areas to be examined will be ways to improve education outcomes across the Wimmera and southern Mallee.

We are asking community members, businesses and agencies to come along prepared to ‘think big’.

Other key themes to be explored include improving service co-ordination across the Wimmera and southern Mallee, strategic regional planning and energy.

If you are interested in and passionate about your community register online at engage.vic.gov.au/wimmera-southernmallee.