Common Curriculum Day fosters collaboration among Mitchell and Murrindindi schools

Department of Education senior education improvement leader Rhonda Cole said it was great for all school staff to connect and network with each other.

“It’s really supposed to support your work in what’s called your annual implementation plan,” she said.

“Schools all have a one-year plan that they’re working on this year, so this work is to support what they’re doing back in their schools.

“Some schools will be adding on to something they’ve already started working on over the past year or two, and for other schools it’ll be starting to put some seeds in place for what they can add this year and do more of next year.”

Seymour College principal Debbie Oliver said the sessions were well received, and was hoping the event would return next year.

“There’s a really positive buzz,” she said.

“It’s really nice to see people connecting with other people they maybe used to work with in the past, or they’ve met at other courses at other meetings.”

Ms Cole agreed with that sentiment.

“People make connections from today, so they’ll be connections that go beyond just this day,” she said.

“They’ll be able to hook up in the future. They saw each other in the same session and then share their learning.”

Ms Cole said she hoped the Common Curriculum Day helped people to realise that other schools were on the same journey of trying to implement the same things as them.

“The best way to do that is to work across schools, and we have a really collaborative network, schools do reach out and support each other, so this is just another part of that,” she said.

“It’s another way of adding to our toolkit of being able to connect with others.

“We’ve got really high-level research best-practice presenters, so they’re people that have done all the research that are showing us things at work.

“It helps our schools and our staff to realise that this (practices and research) is going to have the greatest impact.”