This course will count towards Teacher Identified Professional Development (PD) hours (known as Elective PD under NESA’s new Accreditation of PD Courses Policy)..

Description

This professional learning helps schools to create a ‘comprehensive and integrated strategy in place to support the cognitive, emotional, social, physical, and spiritual wellbeing of students in a context of quality teaching and learning.’ as per the Wellbeing Framework for Schools’ description of ‘Achieving school excellence in wellbeing’.

Understanding the multidimensional nature of wellbeing leads to improvement in student learning and wellbeing, and informs school planning.

The professional learning orientates participants to the current educational landscape, facilitates a situational analysis of their school’s wellbeing practices and then provides practical, evidence-based strategies to enhance student wellbeing and meet identified student needs. It provides a solid foundation to evaluate current practices and plan future wellbeing programs within the school using the Wellbeing Framework and the Wellbeing for School Excellence resource. Participants create project teams and plan these approaches, aligning them with their school’s strategic directions and mapping them across the School Excellence Framework.

There are three key takeaways from this course;

• Wellbeing is everybody’s business and every staff member can support the learning and wellbeing of our students.
• Learning and wellbeing are inextricably linked.
• Wellbeing programs can and should be evidenced across the SEF.

There are currently 200 endorsed facilitators of this professional learning across NSW. These facilitators are predominantly Student Support & Specialist Programs (SS&SP) staff, Assistant Principal Learning and Support (APLAs) staff and school executive members. It is recommended that one executive member be trained as a facilitator to then lead that learning in their school. For information about facilitator training, contact wellbeing@det.nsw.edu.au.

The Achieving School Excellence in Wellbeing and Inclusion tool is explored and used throughout this PL and forms part of the pre-reading. The tool integrates the:

• School Excellence Framework V2
• NSW Wellbeing Framework for Schools
• Inclusive Education Statement for students with disability
• Inclusive Education Policy for students with disability

These resources describe what ‘excellence’ looks like in schools. By comparing these resources and highlighting their individual measures of excellence, schools are supported to reflect on the commonalities across these documents. This tool supports schools to evidence school achievement in wellbeing and inclusion in each theme of the School Excellence Framework.

Roles

• All