Principals and school governing bodies discharge your duty of care and compliance obligations in good policies. A good policy liberates. It authorises teachers and staff to exercise judgement within clear boundaries.

Good policies support student learning by providing stability through routine, predictability, and structure within clear boundaries.

Good policies allow students to be confident about everything that’s going on, what’s expected of them, and to trust their teachers and peers. Stability also encourages students to self-regulate.

A good policy is written in simple, plain language, where every word counts.

Contact me if you need your polices reviewed, edited, or drafted.

Principals and school governing bodies discharge your duty of care and compliance obligations by training staff. Good training has a clear objective, animates theory with case studies, relies on sources of legal authority, and harnesses the wisdom and experience of participants.

Good training allows participants to recognise they know more thantthey think. It gives the confidence to build on that experience.

Sessions are designed to meet the needs of the school, in content, participant numbers, and time.

As a lawyer with extensive experience in supporting school decision makers, my presentations harness the power of story through case studies.

Contact me for your training needs.

Good school governance is essential if teachers are to have the confidence and stability to teach, and support staff are to have the authority and resources to make decisions.

Principals need to be supported by governing bodies who have a practical understanding of their sources of decision making authority.

Princiapls also need leadership teams at all levels of their school who exercise delegated authority with skill, good judgement, and confidence.

Even Parents & Friends and other associations need to understand where they sit within the school decision making hierarchy and what obligations they have to the Principal and other governing bodies.

Contact me if you would like advice or support in good governance.

Parents are their child’s first educators. By choosing to enrol their child in your school, parents recognise two things:

You have superior skill and experience in how to best educate their child, and

Their child is best prepared for life by being educated in community..

The most successful parent-school partnerships are built on clear understanding of the boundaries between home and school. They also require the school to balance parent advocacy for their child, with the needs of the school community.

Your teachers and their students need the confidence of policies and communication that manage parent expectations of behaviour.

You also need the tools to address and resolve complaints in the best interests of each student in community.

Contact me if you need advice on creating and managing parent expectations, and resolving complaints.

Good decisions in schools rely on obtaining and assessing the best information. A good investigation is simply locating information and providing it in a plain language form to the Principal or decision maker.

I have decades of experience in investigations, including drafting terms of reference, to training investigators, to conducting investigations, to reviewing investigations, to supporting decision makers in carrying out recommendations.

I have investigated subjects ranging from allegations of child sexual abuse to performance management.

As a lawyer, I am authorised under legislation to conduct workplace investigations.

Contact me if you need advice on conducting an investigation.

Schools collect, store, use, disclose and give access to enormous amounts of often sensitive information about students and their families.

Principals and staff need good information stewardship understanding, policies and practices to support good decision making.

You must be confident about what information you can collect and store, how long must you retain it, and how to respond to unauthorised access or disclosure.

You also need to know how to respond to requests for access to information from parents, students, and third parties.

Contact me if you need policies, advice, or training on information stewardship.