During 2020, we are trialling a new way of communicating with all our members and associate members by including my report after each Board meeting at the beginning of our TOPICS Journal. Therefore, TOPICS will be published 5 times per year.

On behalf of our Board, I would like to acknowledge all our Principals who have worked so tirelessly during the last few months under very difficult circumstances. It is with immense gratitude that we look to our leaders who have shown great skill, professionalism and compassion to bring your schools carefully and thoughtfully through these unprecedented times.

Some points of interest:

At our most recent Board meeting via zoom we welcomed our new State and Territory Directors: Julie Wiley from ACT, Mark Powell from WA and Shane Donohue from NT. We also welcomed Liz Keogh from SA back to join the Board.

ACARA CEO - David de Carvalho

David joined our meeting and provided an update on ACARA including website changes to make it more user friendly.  ACARA will look at the amount of content on its website and the review of KLA’s within the Curriculum.  David also gave an update on the MySchool website changes. We appreciate that ACARA will continue to keep ACPPA updated.

Thanks to Fran Bonanno from NSW who will be the ACPPA representative on the National Peak Parent/Principals group at ACARA 

During my report I shared a number of important updates:

• the impact of COVID -19 on schools and the economy
• the release of the 2019 Principal Health and Wellbeing report
• progress on a new ACPPA logo
• progress on the proposed ACPPA Principals Wellbeing Portal
• postponement of the APPA Trans-Tasman Conference to July 2021
• the postponement of the NCEC conference - new date to be confirmed

Our Directors spent time at this meeting discussing how each State and Territory are working towards assessment and reporting for Semester 1, as well as giving an update about how their jurisdiction managed the COVID environment.

As part of our work with APPA, we have been involved in meetings this week with Mark Grant CEO of AITSL, looking at the Stocktake of Professional Standards, School Leadership Action Plan, COVID19 Experiences and the National Research Institute.

We also met with the Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan to discuss COVID 19 experiences and the need for greater consultation and collaboration in the future on matters directly affecting principals.

A word from our Partners at Australian Catholic Super and Camp Australia

It was wonderful to be able to hear from Cameron Wood at ACS and Michael Reid from Camp Australia, who zoomed in to give us an update on how recent events have impacted on their organsiations. We look forward to hearing from our other partners at our next meeting. 

                                                  

Regards