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Working systematically: Western
Cape College, Far North Queensland
Much of the text below is adapted from The
Journey to Success 2001-2006: A Retrospective on the Development
of Western Cape College, and used with the generous
permission of the College. |
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Context
Western Cape College was created in 2001, with the official
launch on January 1 2002 by the Queensland Minister of Education.
It operates on three (formerly four) campuses.
The Aurukun community
has a population of approximately 1,200 people and is situated
on the Archer River 220 km south of Weipa. The settlement
was established as a Presbyterian mission in 1904. Aurukun
Campus was originally Koolkan Aurukun Community State School,
a P-10 education facility serving approximately 300 students.
Mapoon is a small Indigenous community
of approximately 350 people, located along the shores of
Port Musgrave 85kms north of Weipa and was established as
a Presbyterian mission in 1891. In the 1950s bauxite-rich
land was discovered and mining leases were established. Mapoon
State School began as a one teacher community school but
has grown into a P-6 education facility.
Napranum was established
in 1898 by Moravian missionaries on behalf of the Presbyterian
Church. The community is 12kms south of Weipa with a population
of approximately 1,100. In the 1950s bauxite was discovered
with mining commencing in 1960. The school opened in 1967
and was a P-6 education facility catering for approximately
80 enrolments, but students now attend the Weipa Campus after
an extensive transition support and consultation process.
Weipa has a population of approximately 2500
and is a coastal mining town on the Cape York Peninsula. The
township of Weipa was originally developed by Comalco as the
mine at Weipa South (now known as Napranum) expanded during
the early 1960s. Weipa Campus, formally known as Weipa North
State School is a P-12 education facility. Since inception,
the school has serviced the senior schooling needs of students
from Aurukun, Napranum and Mapoon, despite poor outcomes for
these students.
More detail about the four
campuses ...
Visit
the schools website ... |
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The
genesis of the College
Ian Mackie is Director of Western
Cape College. Here he talks about how and why the College
was established.
 The College was an idea in '99
and became a reality in 2000, after about twelve
months of consultation.
The vision was to greatly increase
the rate of completion of secondary school Indigenous
students. Associated with this was an old problem
where schools wax and wane on the arrival and departure
of a principal. There's often a cycle of peaks and
troughs and we wanted to overcome that. Sometimes
we've seen a 'Boys Own Adventure' approach, where everything has
to change when a new principal arrives, and that's
especially true of smaller schools.
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In any case, these changes can be discouraging
for teachers who have served in the same place for some
time and seen two or three principals come and go. And
even more so for the long-term Indigenous workers. They're
the ones who really walk the walk and are out there trying
hard to get kids to school, and that's part of their community
life. It's not just their school life.
We wanted a structure that would get
over the cycle of peaks and troughs.
More
about the establishment of the College…
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Organisation
Now
in the model we have, I'm the College Director,
and I supervise heads of campus. Their roles changed quite
dramatically, so that where they used to have all the principal's
responsibilities for administration and management, that
has all been centralised. The heads of campus are very
much focused on outcomes, teaching and learning and relationships.
Their
responsibilities are to build the relationships with the
community, to really push the curriculum and the pedagogy
and they've got the mind space to be able to do that.
They don't have to worry about the irrigation system
and painting the school but they are challenged
to deliver quality teaching and learning outcomes. They
get promoted because they're good teachers so we
put them in charge of teaching and learning. We want them
to lead young teachers in a team approach around quality
outcomes and build relationships with the community.
Our
approach focuses on well-defined accountabilities and authorities.
It's less about the person than the position. When
someone is inducted into a job, they learn about their
organisational operational authorities, what they are accountable
for and how they make decisions at a strategic level. It's
quite clear cut, it gives them the authority and then they're
accountable for outcomes.
We
do have robust performance appraisal, but it's not
a punitive environment and there's plenty of mentoring
and help for people when they need it. One of the things
we've had success with is training people about how
to run a damn good school. So we've had a large number
of people get quite significant promotions out of the College
because they understand how a place ticks, how it works,
how to assign tasks and how to monitor the work of people.
We've found that the models that work best are team-based
ones which provide support to teachers closest to the classroom.
So, for instance, when beginning teachers turn up on the
first day of school they might feel all at sea, so we have
a Day One document which says 'here's some content,
here's some strategies and we'll see you in a
couple of day's time to see how that went for you'.
That very supportive environment produces growth in energy
and promotes a 'can do' attitude. Next year,
we're going to pull them out at Easter time and talk
more about teaching and learning, how they're making
a difference in the classroom, what's working and letting
them compare notes with their peers.
More
about organisational structure ... |
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Curriculum
and pedagogy
Curriculum and pedagogical practice is organised around
three stages of schooling: Junior P-3, Middle 4-9 and Senior
10-12. Each stage of schooling is co-ordinated across campuses
by a Head of Staged Schooling, who works with teaching staff
to develop curriculum that is consistent across classrooms,
year levels and stages of schooling.
Early education services are provided
at each of the college sites, supporting the alternative
early education services available in Western Cape communities.
College curriculum programs in early education are based
on the Queensland Studies Authority's Early Years Curriculum Guidelines.
These guidelines inform the Junior School Curriculum
Guidelines developed by the College.
The College is implementing the New
Basics Framework and has developed suites of Rich
Tasks and Depth Studies that connect student's learning
to their lived experience. This ensures the curriculum,
pedagogy and assessment at the College are culturally appropriate
and equip students to participate in new technologies,
economies, cultures and communities. Currently, the New
Basics curriculum is being aligned with the Queensland
Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Framework. This
has required the College to demonstrate coverage of all
of the essential learnings identified in the new framework.
At the senior stage of schooling,
programs are based on the Queensland Studies Authority's Key Learning
Outcomes syllabus documents. Vocational education and
training courses are also included in the curriculum for
students following a clearly articulated VET pathway.
Ian talks more about curriculum:
In
the past there was a big disparity between the quality
and comparability of work done in primary schools. In some
places, there was a lot of busy work that delivered very
few outcomes but then in other locations there was high
quality academic work. People here embraced the New
Basics, so that no matter where you move on the Cape
you find work that has significant emphasis on assessment
and moderation, and a lot of transparency. Teachers are
vigorously challenged around the academic rigour of what
goes on in the classroom.
All
kids learn in different ways but it's about turning
them on to learning. And we've found that Indigenous
kids are capable of the full range of achievement. When
kids are eight or ten years of age and they see that the
highest achieving kids in the class are Indigenous, then
they're getting a valuable lesson in what it means
to live in a society that as plural as the one we live
in.
I have a strong view that children fall
into two categories, school users and school choosers.
Now if you're school user you are likely to look
at school like a service that is provided to you and be
highly critical of your lack of ability to learn because
the service is inadequate. As opposed to the school chooser
who has made a choice to avail themselves of an opportunity
and is a clear partner in the service provision. That person
says, 'Yes, look I'm going to try as hard
as I possibly can to learn this environment'. It's
easier for children to fall into the category of users,
but turning them on to learning moves them into the category
of choosers.
I think a lot of our Indigenous
families are going through what other families went through
in the post war period. They're finding that quality
education can deliver social mobility and a life
significantly better as a result of application to studies.
I grew up on that idea in the fifties. For Aboriginal people
it's front and centre right now.
More
about curriculum … |
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Data
We've got a rich data environment these days, so
there's really no place for myths about achievement
or inferences that really aren't valid.
After
the College was established, the student population at
the Weipa campus doubled. The Indigenous numbers went from
160 to 450. Some came with their families seeking employment,
based on new employment policies of the major employers
in Weipa. That turned the town around from being a white
mining town to a town that was fairly open to Indigenous
people coming to live.
We
had a lot of examples of kids who had been enrolled at
school. They were turning up in Grade 3 for the first time.
Now over a period of five years the Weipa campus has moved
to a 50 percent Indigenous and 50 percent non-Indigenous
population. And we've succeeded in keeping the average
outcomes of the school largely the same. So the doom and
gloom merchants who predicted the end of civilisation as
we know it and said that outcomes would go down have been
shown to be wrong.
The bonus of doubling the
school population has been that we are now offering a full
suite of year 11 and 12 subjects. So kids who used to leave
to go to boarding school are now staying at home.
More
details about data and outcomes …
More about strategic directions
... |
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