Clip 7: Ongoing challenges

Eleanor:

With the high turnover that we have, we’ve actually found that incoming staff or new staff are more positive and more open to change. They come in and say, “Oh, this is the way you do it at this school? Right, we’ll get on board.” The resistance tends to come from people who have been here a long time, are comfortable doing things the way they have, and haven’t yet realised that what we are doing will make a difference to their students.

Trevor:

A problem I think that’s particular to secondary schools – secondary schools are very complex institutions, and I think that it’s easy for things to get in the way and for the eye to go off professional learning. And that’s the important role of leadership, it’s always there, it’s at the forefront. These things might be going on, these nuts and bolts issues might be affecting us, but we’re here to do a good job for our kids.