Dandenong North Primary School
Case study snapshot
The challenge
Dandenong North Primary School is located in one of Victoria’s most disadvantaged communities and employs a large representation of early career teachers.
The response
The school places a large emphasis on the professional development of its staff. All early career teachers take part in a comprehensive induction program, receive independent specialist coaching, and are assigned an in-school mentor.
The takeaways
Effective school leadership can create professional development cultures that improve early career teacher effectiveness and retention.
Dandenong North Primary School (DNPS) is a prep to year six government school in South-Eastern Melbourne, Victoria. The school has over 600 students, with 70% coming from families with a low SES context. The student population has an enormous diversity of cultural and language backgrounds. This includes 46% who were born outside Australia and 60 school families who have arrived in Australia in the past 12 months. 80% of the students speak at least one of the 52 languages other than English as their main language at home. DNPS considers this cultural diversity to be a strength of their school community:
Our wonderful and vibrant students come from a wide diversity of cultural backgrounds and provide a model for the adult Australian society of how diversity can deliver a fantastic team and family approach to learning.1
DNPS was recently awarded the Victorian School Leadership Team of the Year by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD). This acknowledged the DNPS Leadership Team and their ongoing professional development opportunities for their 82 teaching and support staff. The professional development and support has created DNPS to be one of Australia’s highest performing low SES schools.
In developing school-wide professional development, DNPS have recognised the importance of directed development for their early career teachers (ECTs). DNPS have focused explicitly on the following strategies to improve ECT quality within their school:
- Recruitment/Selection: A detailed recruitment and selection process;
- Socialisation: Once recruited, DNPS provide many opportunities for ECTs to socialise and collaborate professionally.
- Induction: All new ECTs participate in a year-long Induction program;
- Mentoring and Coaching: ECTs are assigned an in-school mentor for pastoral support and professional guidance. Specialist and independent coaching opportunities are also provided to ECTs focusing on their classroom practice.
This support includes directed development of their early career teachers (ECTs), which is critical to improving student outcomes. The school’s high performance is demonstrated in outstanding NAPLAN results, where the students perform above or substantially above Australian averages in almost all areas.
