Dear Colleagues and Members 

This week the Directors of our ACPPA Board met in Brisbane for our third meeting of the year. It is so important for us to meet together in person after what has been an unprecedented complex time for schools. As you know this year, we have a number of new Directors and our meeting focussed on establishing how we use our diversity and skills to action our new strategic plan. There is no better way to explore and discuss the national agenda than by sitting around a table with colleagues and entering into deep conversation and discernment.

At this meeting we spent considerable time planning around our new Strategic Plan  and heard from our invited guests:

• The key pillars of our plan include Catholic Advocacy, National Engagement and Board Growth and Development and can be now found on our website (see below)

• Dr Debra Sayce, Executive Director of Catholic Education Western Australia shared her thoughts on student wellbeing frameworks, leadership in context, system initiatives and the importance of relationships in all these areas.
• The BE YOU team from Beyond Blue spoke with us about the resources and information available to all Principals around student and teacher wellbeing. Be You is a free federally funded initiative for all schools in Australia.
• A major agenda item was to break into newly formed sub-committees around financial management, member engagement, wellbeing, research, and professional learning. The work of the Board is to ensure we act with due diligence in all areas which affect Principal voice and advocacy. To complement these groups we also created and refined a number of policy frameworks.
• The recent roundtable for the national teacher action plan was high on our agenda as we discussed our ACPPA position and involvement in upcoming talks.
• We shared a presentation with Josephine and Tyson Brennan from Brennan Law, who have co-created ACPConnect with us. We are committed to growing this portal and ensuring we continue promoting the value of this wellbeing portal for all our Principals.
• Look out for the data around our recent annual benchmarking survey. These will be shared though our 'Just the Essentials' fortnightly bulletin.
• A highlight of our time together was to share our Board dinner with ACPPA’s 1984 Inaugural President – Frank Hennessy. Frank was instrumental in forming and shaping ACPPA in the early days and along with his wife Lorraine, enjoyed a night of story and conversation. We also presented Frank with an earlier version of our ACPPA flag as a keepsake.

Our Board work on your behalf to be the voice of Catholic Primary Principals across Australia. Please contact your State/Territory Director (details on our website) for more information.

Enjoy this edition of Talk Of Principals In Catholic Schools.

Take Care

Peter Cutrona 

President