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This episode we’re speaking all about multi-school organisations, that is, groups of schools that work together to establish processes and practices that ensure success for larger groups of students, and harness economies of scale to save resources to spend them more wisely for greater impact.
The report that we’re discussing today, Why Australia should trial multi-school organisations, was also co-written by Amy Haywood, Deputy Program Director of Grattan's Education Program.
Our guests today visited 7 schools and organisations across New York and England to work out what some of the benefits of multi-school organisations are, and what it is that make them successful. And now they’re back in Australia and spreading the word about the value of us considering exploring this model here. I’m super excited about this initiative and am really looking forward to hopefully seeing the emergence of more multi-school organisations here in Australia in years to come.
And our guests this episode are Jordana Hunter and Nick Parkinson.
Dr Jordana Hunter is the Education Program Director at Grattan Institute, where she has co-authored a number of reports on topics like teacher workload, catch-up tutoring, curriculum planning, and literacy. Jordana has been on federal education advisory panels, held policy roles for the department of premier and cabinet, prime minister and cabinet, and in numerous other organisations.
Jordana has a PhD in social and political sciences, honours in lor and commerce, and is a phenomenal researcher all round as you’ll quickly discover in this podcast!
Nick Parkinson is a Senior Associate in Grattan Institute’s Education Program. He has a particular research interest in education data and how it can improve government policies to support quality teaching. Before joining Grattan, Nick was a consultant at Nous Group where he contributed to projects on school culture, student assessment, and occupational safety.
Nick comes from a family of teachers, and is himself, completing a Master of Teacher with the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. He is a Westpac Future Leader.
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Links/resources mentioned in the show
- The Grattan report Why Australia should trial multi-school organisations,
- Nick 1: Book – Leading Academy Trusts: While Some Fail but Most Don’t (Sir David Carter, Laura McInerney)
- Nick 2: Podcast – Lessons from History (Daisy Christodolou’s podcast with Elizabeth Wells at Westminster School) – start with the two episodes on exams, and also ‘education innovations’; Thursday Murder Club (Richard Osman);
- Nick 3: Audiobook – The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race. Book by Farah Karim Cooper ← The audiobook!
- Jordana 1: Podcas – Ezra Klein’s, a NY Times author/podcaster – several episodes on AI that go deep into the new large language models; benefits/costs;
- Jordana 2: Book – Atul Gawande Checklist Manifesto (experts need checklists too!);
- Ollie's Books, Cognitive Load Theory in Action and Tools for Teachers
- To get a summary of this episode, sign up at www.patreon.com/errr
This episode of the ERRR Podcast is brought to you by John Catt Educational
This episode of the ERRR podcast is brought to you by Catalyst. Catalyst transforms students' lives through learning by developing excellent teachers and Leaders through evidence-based professional learning programs. Find out more at https://catalyst.cg.catholic.edu.au/
Listen to all past episodes of the ERRR podcast here.