Employing an inclusive whole of school model involves fostering strong connections between school principals, school business managers and the hub, ensuring that all are equally invested in the success of the hub.
You can assist hub leaders by encouraging strong connections and collaboration between the school and the hub, reviewing your school plan to ensure it is in line with the community hub outcomes and program planning, and ensuring there is a collaboration between the school and hub throughout the cycle: planning, implementing and evaluating.
“At Wollongong West Public School, we are currently drafting our new school improvement plan. Our recently completed situational analysis identified a need to strengthen our community’s sense of connection and belonging to our school. Therefore, our school is planning for a strategic direction for our school in 2021-2024 to be titled Belonging and for an initiative to sit under that strategic direction called Community Connection. Our community hub leaders are key participants in the planning process for this important strategic direction and initiative.
It was evident that our school needed to build upon already established activities that are successful, such as swimming lessons, cooking classes, English classes and sewing lessons to strengthen community connection to our school. In order to further develop parent/carer understanding of school life and children’s individual learning journeys, we are planning for new hub initiatives to be introduced in the new year. New activities include workshops presented to hub members by teaching staff around learning in Australian primary schools, training of community hub members to be parent helpers in the classroom for literacy, numeracy, art and play activities and Kindergarten teachers attending already established hub play groups to support children with a successful transition to school.
Effective collaboration in the design of our new school improvement plan by teaching staff, students, parents/carers and our community hub leaders is critical in ensuring that our new school improvement plan will reflect the current and emerging needs of our community and that our school and community hub are responsive to these identified needs.”
Michelle Barnes
Principal at Wollongong West Public School in New South Wales, formerly with the National Community Hubs Program
Reporting and invoicing