How will the new Magnify Sandhurst program impact local primary schools?

St Mel’s Primary School principal Stephen Hicks said the program was a new way to teach the next generation.

“It’s a whole system change around the delivery of curriculum focused on improving learning outcomes for children and young people,” Mr Hicks said.

“It’s pretty exciting, as the initiative is firmly based around the neuroscience of learning.”

Although the focus is currently on numeracy and literacy, Mr Hicks said the changes would continue throughout the rest of the subjects at the Shepparton school.

“Initially commencing with literacy and numeracy, we’re rolling implementation across other curriculum areas as well, over time,” he said,

“As Catholic schools, we have a Catholic education curriculum as well, so that’s also being looked at and revised as part of the Magnify initiative.

“We’ll be implementing a low-variance religious education curriculum within our schools that is also based on those principles of neuroscience.”

Mr Hicks said the new program would allow teachers to get back some of their overtime.

“Our teachers can then put their time, energy and effort into the delivery of the curriculum, not having to actually develop the curriculum themselves,” he said.

“If we’re lessening the workload on teachers ... then they’ll have more time to devote to assessments, to understand how children learn, the next steps for learning and to make any of those adjustments that are required so that all learners can actually access the curriculum at their level.”

He said he couldn’t foresee many particular challenges beyond the existing challenges schools face.

“Schools are busy places, so there’s always the challenge of the busyness of school life ... but that’s just everyday challenges, really,” he said.

“Some of it (challenges) could be around the continuing teacher shortage.

“However, through the implementation of Magnify we anticipate teachers wanting to come and work in our schools over time.”

One of his staff, Year 1/2 teacher Julia Barnes, said the key skills the school would be focusing on would be solidified.

“There’s a lot of hype in the news at the moment surrounding how we teach reading and phonics … but the science behind learning to read is not just phonics, it’s a comprehensive body of research developed over decades that explains how our brains learn new skills like reading,” she said.

“As with learning any complex skill, like swimming, we start small, break the skills apart, practise, consolidate and continue to build it up with complexity.

“Looking at this in a Prep to (Year) 2 setting, it’s about breaking down these complex skills for our children in our care into bite-size pieces to eventually build, practise and integrate to become skilful readers, spellers, writers and mathematicians.”

Mrs Barnes said the program would allow teachers to focus on what was most important: the students.

“Our students have one chance at schooling, and we are ensuring that we do it right,” she said.

“This is bigger than just learning the right way. Ensuring our children in rural and regional areas have access to high-quality instruction builds capacity in our communities.”

At St Luke’s Catholic Primary School in Shepparton North, deputy principal, learning and teaching Jen McKillop said the changes would help teachers focus on aspects of their job other than lesson planning.

“If the curriculum is already set, and you already know what’s happening on a day-to-day basis and that’s planned, then you’re thinking, how do I extend this set of students in that space? And how do I support these students in this other space?” she said.

“So the content and the resources don’t change, but the amount of support that you give one student versus the amount of extension you give another, that’s where the work is going to go.

“It’s just now that it’s being brought together to assimilate across the diocese and across the staff.”

One of the major components of the program is the behavioural curriculum, which focus on teaching students how to act in a classroom setting.

Ms McKillop said the main difference it would make in the classroom was having consistent expectations.

“I think the expectations ... vary from one class to another, and you’ve got teachers with different levels of tolerance — some will tolerate a lot more than others,” she said.

“And some have different ways of managing their classroom behaviour issues or even just classroom routines in general.

“It will just be: these are the expectations, this is the curriculum and these are the resources and this is the way that we’re doing this.”

St Luke’s Catholic Primary School Year 5/6 teacher and Year 3 to 6 learning leader Eloise Liddell mirrored Ms McKillop’s comments.

“It puts everyone on the same page for the teaching and the learning. We have a lot of the background planning organised for us so we can all teach in the same way, ensuring that we reach the same standards and outcomes for every child,” Ms Liddell said.

As one of the teachers having to implement the changes in the classroom, she said the school has prepared its staff thoroughly.

“We’re in a really good place because we've been exploring and experimenting already throughout this year, so having done that, yes, I believe that things will change for next year,” Ms Liddell said.

“If I was thrown into it day one next year, I might have been a little bit unsure of how to navigate the new program.”

One of the benefits of the program is that the content will be more accessible for parents, whether it be through direct communications from schools or conversations with their children, she said.

“It is more accessible,” Ms Liddell said.

“I have found that some of the students in my room are actually having more conversations about their day with their parents because it’s all-encompassing and all connected.”