by Daniel Lyng
Papua New Guinea (PNG) is not generally a well-known place for those of us that were born in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly Europe. A place I only knew of as it was close to Australia, and it had featured in many David Attenborough documentaries.
I took the role of Deputy Principal at Lae International School in January 2024 and embarked on a rewarding and challenging journey. The school had gone through upheaval over the years prior to my appointment. LIS had been created from the merger of two schools, one primary and one secondary, to create a new entity, a K-12 International Boarding school. The school is owned and operated by the International Education Agency (IEA) of PNG, the IEA’s mission; to provide high quality private education, meeting the needs of individual learners in a caring environment. Supporting students through the development of five key outcomes; to be self-directing, to communicate effectively, being ethical, working collaboratively, and analysing and solving problems.
Upon my arrival in Papua New Guinea, my family and I were given an incredible welcome by the Principal of the school and immediately welcomed into the school community. Lae, the second major city in PNG, doorway to the highlands and the busiest shipping port, certainly held challenges. It is fairly small and, due to the general levels of poverty requires common sense when out and travelling. Work started on day 2 of my arrival, learning the current state of the school, set across two campuses and the boarding house currently awaiting the opening of the new boarding accommodation on the secondary campus due to a fire three years previous. Up till this point the boarding had been in rental accommodation. On top of the merger of the schools and the boarding house fire, the school had just about recovered from and survived the COVID years. What was apparent was that many things that once were in place, now were not. Part of my role was to begin to reintroduce things that had become dormant: ongoing professional learning, ECAs, and intervention, all high on the list.
Building Trust Through Communication
It was clear after a couple of weeks at the school I would need to build trust through communication. The two Heads of Campus with oversight of secondary and primary were going to be close allies. I had an open and honest conversation with them about what they thought needed to change, and possible ways forward. The most apparent thing was that the staff wanted to be heard. I began getting staff on board with a new professional learning cycle. We introduced areas of a pedagogical framework and asked staff to summarise what they would expect to see in the classroom and other areas of the school. The areas were: behaviour and relationships, effective curriculum design, checking prior knowledge, explaining and modelling, quality questioning and next step feedback, independent practice and retrieval. From this first session we designed a set of shared quality teaching principles – things we should see throughout the school that underpinned our mission to meet the needs of individual learners. To ensure I had the opportunity to get an overview from all teaching staff, I created a teaching and learning survey against the principles we had identified. Through this, staff could rate their current classroom practice in these areas and their priorities for professional learning. Using this data, we could identify whole school, campus, and individual staff priorities. A calendar for professional learning was created through my first academic year at the school January to December 2024 and a new one in 2025. The data-informed teacher only days, campus professional learning meetings, online learning opportunities, and supported individual appraisal conversations, ensuring they were focused on development and not on scrutiny.
In amongst this task, ECAs were re-introduced to the school and student assessment data tracking was implemented to identify intervention needs. This ensured that students had both enrichment opportunities and we were identifying academic needs, putting in place early intervention to support student progress where needed.
New Priorities
As the end of Semester 1 approached, it became apparent the Principal of the school would be leaving and we had a new Principal arriving in Semester 2. On our first meeting my new Principal asked me my thoughts on the current situation. I explained our drive towards further developing teacher competency through professional learning. How we were using student data for intervention, though this was still in its early stages, and how we were trying to promote enrichment activities for students. There were three things I raised concerns about: 1). The lack of a unique shared identity for the school, we had the IEA outcomes but how were we embedding this in our school culture effectively and simply so all students could relate to it. 2). The need to review our curriculum and practices with all stakeholders. 3). The use of mobile phones across the secondary school was of great concern, it was clearly impacting learning and the number of incidents related to social media and cyberbullying were increasing. After much discussion, it became very apparent that the new Principal and I were on the same page and he had identified these areas for development based on his knowledge of the school. As an SLT, comprised of myself, the Principal, Heads of Campus, Head of Boarding, and Business Manager, we agreed on the process of a school self-review using the National Toolkit for school improvement from the Australian Council of Educational Research (ACER), which is underpinned by the work from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). Whilst an Australian initiative, as a UK-trained leader and educator, I was already familiar with the EEF research and guidance.
Strategic Plan
We surveyed the staff, students, and, parents, using the data to create a set of school affirmations and improvement objectives. This led to our new strategic five-year plan and our focus for this year on enhancing communication, adherence to policies and procedures, and academic excellence. An area of concern from parents was the use of mobile phones, this reinforced a decision to ban the use of mobile smartphones on the school campus based on the impact we were seeing from their free use. Though this took some time implementation of this rule was quick, and with a consistent approach from staff it worked, in the past 9 weeks, 1 phone has been confiscated. We put in an early rule that if phones were seen they would be confiscated and parents had to come to collect them from the school office, as they would not be returned to students.
We launched and introduced our new unique interpretation of the IEA key outcomes, the LIS STEPS to success. The aim is for the outcomes to be developed through the STEPS to success and these would underpin all of our language and policies in the school. The STEPS are: self-directing, teamwork, ethical, problem solving, and speaking. We explained and linked these to the IEA outcomes for staff, students, and parents. We created a new rewards system linked to the STEPS across the whole school and ensured it is visible through newly designed signage, via our school correspondence, in the language we use, and the expectations we have.
It has been a year and half since I started at the school and a year since embarking on the journey of school self-improvement with the new Principal. On a recent visit from the IEA Director of Education, we were commended for the change of culture in the school. As an SLT, we are often stopped and thanked by parents, and the general perception of the school in the community has improved.
One thing this journey has taught me since I embarked on it 18 months ago, schools as organisations are in constant states of change and managing this through consistency and communication is imperative to bring about a desired change in culture, which we have taken great strides towards. With open and honest communication, consistent policy development, and a shared, unique interpretation of why and how we fulfil the IEA mission and outcomes for children, it has been an opportunity for growth across the whole school.
Key Takeaways:
● Coherence and consistency among SLT are imperative for change.
● Including staff in ‘why’ decisions are made and ‘how’ they should be enacted, ensures fidelity in implementation.
● Making tough decisions, such as removing distractions from mobile phones, with the above point in mind, is more supported than you might first believe. Generally, parents are struggling with this at home; changing student habits in school can support changes at home.
● A common language and consistent approach to expectations and shared values support culture change.
● Honesty and transparency are key for successful change.
Useful Resources:
https://www.acer.org/au/research/school-improvement-tool
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/implementation
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/
Start with why — how great leaders inspire action | Simon Sinek |https://youtu.be/u4ZoJKF_VuA?si=xv1bqPILeW6nU7Xc
Daniel Lyng, Deputy Principal, Lae International School, Papua New Guinea
LYIS is proud to partner with WildChina Education
