Last week, the ACPPA board met for the first time in 2023 at our Canberra meeting. The board welcomed three new members, Paula Sellars and Reuben Johnson representing the NT and Rachel Smith representing the ACT. We farewelled one of our longest standing members, Chris Golightly, the Queensland ACPPA representative since 2017. This meeting was also the first of our new EO, Gez Mulvahil and we look forward to her continued support of our board over the coming months and years.

The work of our meeting was broken into three key spaces over the two days.

Firstly, we listened to a presentation with the AITSL CEO, Mark Grant who outlined the strategic directions for AITSL in 2023 and how Catholic Principals can support the work being undertaken in the next 12 months.

Work in our afternoon session focused on our 2023 strategic intentions and priorities. In particular, significant work occurred within the subcommittee structure in developing the group norms and identifying the work of each group over the next 12 month period.

On Tuesday we had the opportunity to hear from the Federal Education Minister, Jason Clare, who met with the combined boards of ACPPA, IPSHA and AGPPA. The ongoing relationship with the Minister continues to be promising as is his willingness to engage in conversation with primary principals in the response to the teacher workforce discussions and future planning.

We also had the opportunity to meet for 90 minutes with a smaller group with the Opposition Education spokesperson, Senator Sarah Henderson, and raise issues regarding primary education that are relevant across the three sectors, whilst ensuring the Catholic voice was central to our discussion.

Please remember that the ACPPA Board works for all 1240+ Catholic Primary principals across Australia. If you have a question, query or suggestion then contact your State/Territory Director (details on our website) or our EO to bring your queries and questions to your national body.

Regards 

Peter Cutrona 
President