As you heard from Tom Sexton last week, the DOBCEL Board met at St Mary’s in Ararat where we were delighted to welcome Laura Avery for her first board meeting with us. Laura brings extensive experience in school and system leadership across Australia and the United Kingdom. She previously spent five years with the National Catholic Education Commission as a Faith Formation and Policy Adviser and is now Director of the Global Centre for Catholic Leaders, supporting the ongoing formation and development of Catholic leaders. With postgraduate qualifications in leadership, governance and canon law, Laura’s interest in mission-driven governance and sustainable Catholic leadership will add value to the Board.
Future funding was an important focus of our discussions. The Board is deeply concerned about Labor’s move to reduce the legislated state funding that, since 2015 has contributed to maintaining low fees at our schools. Please refer to Tom’s message below regarding a campaign launching this week and ways you can support.
It was a delight to meet with leaders and students from St Mary’s. Further to the detail Tom has already shared, during our meetings we also had the opportunity to meet with Elizabeth Green regarding financial planning and the new Aurion payroll system. Barnaby Ling provided the Board SIMON and ICT team updates, and information on the Nexus project.
The Board reviewed progress demonstrated in the NAPLAN results as well as areas with opportunity for improvement. In our 2035 Strategy one measure of being a “high performing system of Catholic schools” is student learning outcomes that exceed expectations. NAPLAN trends give an important indication of progress towards this goal. The Board would like to thank the teachers and leaders in our schools for their outstanding efforts in collaborating across the DOBCEL network to achieve progress in literacy and numeracy for several year levels. We are certainly seeing the results of the DOBCEL Way: leveraging the collective knowledge and skills we have as large school network, with schools autonomously developing the approaches that work best in their context. We look forward to seeing further growth in our target areas as we continue to work together to improve outcomes for our students.
It is a privilege to serve as Chair of the DOBCEL Board. I know I can speak on behalf of all the members of the board when I share our commitment to the continuous improvement of our governance through the application professional learning. Tom and I were able to share learnings from our recent completion of the AICD Company Directors Course, and the Board had the opportunity to hear Michael Myers’ key takeaways around contemporary governance from the Better Boards Conference he attended in July.
The Board would like to wish our year 12 students all the best of success in their upcoming exams, and everyone in our community fullness of life in the bustle of activity and celebration that characterises term 4.
Warm regards,
Eugene Dalton
