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The Connection: building leadership capacity in education

After 10 years, The Connection, the first SVA-developed venture, has transferred to The Smith Family. Sue Cridge, The Connection’s founding director and a passionate changemaker, reflects on The Connection’s journey and key contributors to its success in improving outcomes for students and children in vulnerable and low socio-economic status communities.

  • SVA Quarterly
  • Systems change , Collaboration
Summary
  • Founded to address inequity in education, The Connection uses collaborative networking to build leadership capacity in schools and educational sites to create better and sustained outcomes for students.
  • The Connection has worked with more than 80 schools or sites across Australia, involving 4,500 educators and impacting approximately 80,000 students.
  • Key contributors to its success include: recognising that real change takes time; thoughtful selection of schools and school leaders; creating genuine partnerships with schools; crossing state and international borders; continuous evaluation and improvement and agility in the face of challenges.

SVA founded The Connection to address the inequity in education: that by the age of 15, students in communities experiencing disadvantage can be almost three years behind their more privileged peers.1 And these poorer outcomes play out later in life in terms of participation in the workforce, education and training. The intent was to provide opportunities for all children and young people to thrive in life and community.

What it is

The Connection uses collaborative networking to build leadership capacity in schools and educational sites to create better and sustained outcomes for students. The design has iteratively evolved using the evidence of social network theory which has at its core creating connections across sites and education systems.

The Connection building leadership capacity in education

“It’s given us networking with like-minded people,” says Louise Reynolds, principal at Granville East Public School, a primary school in Sydney’s west with some 270 students mostly from migrant and refugee families.

“You’re signing up for a leadership strategy… there’s no program being done ‘to’ you… you try things, reflect, try again, but you choose your context. There aren’t many programs that meet you in that way. Most offer content. Maybe for a term. The Connection has been a highly facilitated, deep-thinking leadership model that’s long term.”

The initial focus was on urban schools in low SES (socio-economic status) communities. The Connection has evolved to address specific areas of challenge and inequity: rural, remote and regional schools and education sites; the digital literacy divide; early learning and education transitions; and education for First Nations children.

Spreading what’s working

The Connection’s goal is to locate, highlight and demonstrate what’s working in the system. It is a mechanism by which the best work is exposed, amplified and accelerated into practice across education systems.

This is achieved by a layered approach using collaborative networking which expands from the local level, to state and national levels, even international levels. The networking is augmented with bespoke one-on-one advice, planning, evidence sharing and resource support. 

The Connection building leadership capacity in education

As South Australian education director, Joann Weckert who is responsible for 22 schools and pre-schools on the Yorke peninsula, describes it “We had four sites across the region which participated. They formed a cluster working on common problems at that local level, sharing initiatives and resources and building capacity together.

“Next, at the state level were the hub gatherings which brought together four clusters of sites across South Australia which began ‘smart borrowing’ ideas from each other and designing curriculum together.

“Then the thought leadership gatherings three times a year brought the hubs from the different state systems: SA, NSW and Vic together at the next layer.”

Groups of South Australian educators have also investigated evidence and practices to tackle education inequity in USA, Canada, UK and New Zealand.

What it’s achieved?

To date The Connection has worked with more than 80 schools or sites across Australia, involving 4,500 educators and impacting approximately 80,000 students.

Different schools are aiming for different outcomes particular to their need.

Student engagement, student learning and development and student voice and agency are just some of the outcomes identified in the 2020 RMIT evaluation.

In a 2020 RMIT evaluation, participating schools said The Connection improved: student engagement, student learning and development, STEM-related learning, student voice and agency, metacognition, and general capabilities.

The evaluation demonstrated that growing the capacity of leaders in complex, vulnerable communities is important work. More recently, trends show improved staff retention, as well.

Joann Weckert in South Australia describes the impact on the school leaders from the Yorke peninsula.

“Being exposed to different thinking and networking outside of their closed regional community has built their leadership capacity and confidence to draw on those connections, to go outside their own school or site and to also know that they have professional practices to contribute.

“There’s been a huge growth in those site leaders. As a result, we’re seeing tangible impact on the pedagogy and on the children’s experience. It’s sped up some fundamental changes for teaching and learning.”

At Granville East public school, involvement with The Connection led to the introduction of what it called its ‘powerful learning framework’ as a blueprint for its pedagogy practices – what was non-negotiable across the school – and how it measures impact so that newly inducted staff were across its approach from the start.

In the second phase, the team developed an inquiry learning framework.

“We’ve just completed the three-year project during which opportunities for our students to engage in play-based enquiry learning [which develops critical thinking skills] across the curriculum has tripled,” says Louise Reynolds.

Major phases of development

1. Initial establishment phase (2013-2016)

In 2012, knowing that good education can break trends of poverty and disadvantage, SVA took on the hard challenge of tackling inequity in our education system. 

Early work in the education area had identified the notion of ‘bright spots’ – schools, and particularly school leaders – who were bucking the trend and producing better than average results.

“It was about the things worth celebrating and how we could learn and amplify the good stuff, rather than focusing on what was wrong.”

The initial, simple concept of the venture was to invest in these high-quality leaders who were punching above their weight, capture the evidence of what they were doing and spread it.

As Suzie Riddell, former CEO of SVA, remembers it, “It was about the things worth celebrating and how we could learn and amplify the good stuff, rather than focusing on what was wrong.”

Having consulted broadly with numerous stakeholders in the education system, in government and business, SVA developed an ambitious business plan, setting goals to break entrenched trends. The team also drew on recent research which had identified the characteristics of high-quality leadership in low SES schools that seemed to be achieving extraordinary outcomes.2

The result was a focus on building the capacity of high-quality leaders to enable high-quality teaching, which would lead to better student outcomes.

In 2013, the team completed extensive due diligence to identify eight ‘powerhouse’ schools or ‘bright spots’ from a potential group of 84 and committed to working with some 30 leaders from those schools for five years to capture their magic and share it.

SVA had raised $200,000 to provide funding for specific school programs or training over those five years. The initiative was first called the Bright Spot Schools Connection and later became simply, The Connection.

The focus has always been on building the capacity of high-quality leaders to enable high-quality teaching.

The first few years

The initiative launched in 2014 and involved the SVA team directly supporting the school teams to achieve the outcomes they intended. The 30 leaders from the eight schools visited each others’ sites and met in local clusters and state hub meetings. These were complemented by national events that came to be known as the popular multi day ‘thought leadership gatherings’ (TLGs).

Leaders most valued the collaboration part of The Connection.

What leaders valued most was getting together and sharing their insights, knowledge and expertise: fundamentally, it was the collaboration piece that was most beneficial.

In 2015, its second year, another 10 schools joined and the team approached the NSW and Victorian education departments to co-fund alongside philanthropic support. The team was still prototyping the design, but after a year of testing, the evidence demonstrated that it was working. During 2015, the team secured approval to include schools in South Australia. From 2016 the team took on new groups in cohorts committed to a minimum of three years of engagement.

The Ian Potter Foundation came onboard as one of the first larger philanthropic investors in 2015, providing the resources to scale by investing in our measurement evaluation and learning (MEL) systems.

Nicole Bortone, Senior Program Manager at the Ian Potter Foundation, explains what attracted the Foundation. 

“We liked that they worked with ‘bright spots’ schools… treating the school leaders as the experts rather than dropping a program or model in on them.”

“Philanthropy can’t fund schools directly. So The Connection provided us with an opportunity to support multiple schools to connect and learn from each other.

“We liked that they worked with ‘bright spots’ schools building the evidence base and sharing that practice more widely – treating the school leaders as the experts rather than dropping a program or model in on them.”

There were also a number of family foundations supporting the work from the start-up phase. They found it attractive as it was a tangible investment that they could see enacted in the community. The Australian Council for Education Research (ACER) was involved from the early phases as a key independent evaluator, and in 2016 produced a snapshot of the participating schools and then in 2018 completed case studies of the initial eight ‘brightspots’ schools.

This research verified and confirmed that the most value to the school leaders came from the collaboration component – prioritising learning from each other.

Establishing the concept’s credibility

The main challenge during this phase was establishing the credibility of the model. The Connection was a new concept, which hadn’t been trialled anywhere. There was no direct evidence, just a business plan informed by stakeholders’ input and feedback. Funders had to be prepared to take a risk on a new idea.

Sue Cridge, Founding Director: ‘Funders had to be prepared to take a risk on a new idea.’

As Suzie Riddell said: “Funders had to back SVA and back Sue [Cridge].”

What helped establish credibility early for the Ian Potter Foundation was that even after the first year, schools in The Connection strongly supported the program.

“Some of the governors visited one of the first schools and were impressed that the school leaders themselves really valued the support for their own learning and understanding what it was that they were doing that created improvements for their students,” said Nicole Bortone.

The team’s educational networks helped to play the bridging role between the education sector and SVA. And being a not-for-profit with a national reputation attracted schools to participate

2. Scaling up (2017-2020)

Until this point, The Connection worked with schools in low socio-economic urban areas: primarily western Sydney and north-west Melbourne, and with a small South Australian group.

In this scaling period the work began to extend into targeted risk focus areas such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and geographically extending into rural, remote and regional areas.

The Samsung sponsorship allowed The Connection to help break the digital divide between schools in low SES and more affluent communities.

SVA secured a major sponsorship from Samsung in 2017 to work with STEM education in low SES communities to help bridge the digital divide between these schools and those in more affluent communities. It involved significant funding and digital resources for the schools and communities complemented with expert support and mentoring.

For the first time, the team designed an opportunity for groups of leaders to travel internationally to the US, Canada, and UK. Samsung and other partners brokered and supported visits to educational sites and institutions. Locations included Google HQ, Silicon Valley in California and the UK National STEM Learning Centre, as well as visits to education sites and universities delivering cutting-edge work.  The participants self-funded their travel demonstrating their deep engagement.

The Connection team began expanding work in rural, remote and regional areas funded by both the SA and NSW education departments. The NSW education department had also identified inequity in rural and remote communities as an issue and the team engaged with targeted school sites and teamed with the Gonski Institute at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to support a two-year research project to investigate key issues and opportunities.

Aligning with the education departments’ policies and priorities maintained the momentum of the work while demonstrating the Connection’s responsiveness and relevancy. It also required flexibility on the part of funders.

RMIT study in 2020

By 2020, The Connection had scaled up to 52 sites making it a good size proof-point for further independent evaluation.

The team engaged RMIT’s Policy Strategy and Impact team to conduct an extensive evaluation.

As well as confirming the belief that growing the capacity of education leaders in vulnerable communities was a valuable investment, the RMIT evaluation also provided proof-points for the work. These included an understanding how the capacity was being developed, what was the most value and why, and what were the conditions for success: the non-negotiable, fundamental tenets of the design.

The Connection - RMIT study in 2010
Results of RMIT evaluation for schools after participating for 3-5 years

This meant that the team could work with confidence within the scale up strategy.

“… the RMIT evaluation with positive feedback from the students and schools made the case for further support.”

Throughout this time, SVA provided the safety net for the work, contributed strategic advice to The Connection team, and helped seek necessary revenue, encouraging investors to share the risk as we scaled.

It was important for funders to maintain their trust and investment at this pivotal time. As Nicole from the Ian Potter Foundation explains: “As a funder, we reached the conclusion that most projects need extended multi-year funding to achieve impact. This project was one of them; shifting student outcomes at a systems level and sustaining that practice takes considerable time.

“And the RMIT evaluation with positive feedback from the students and schools made the case for further support.”

Defining SVA’s endgame with The Connection

The Connection’s endgame was hard to define. In the original business plan it was intended that government or a mixture of philanthropy and government would fund the initiative once it had established a track record. Government took some time to fund it at the levels required to scale and this meant funders were critical to continue the scale up journey.

 SVA Consulting completed a strategic review and plan for the next stage of the scale up. And the team were primed to start implementing it when Covid-19 (Covid) hit.

3. Consolidation (2020-now)

Once Covid hit in 2020, the team had to respond and adapt very quickly given schools and education sites were at the nexus of the Covid challenges.

The Ian Potter Foundation supportively asked what was needed to adapt the work. As a result the team were provided with support and resources to build a digital platform through which the work could evolve and continue the networking collaborations. This also provided a secure space for school leaders to record information and interact online and allowed the remote and regional schools to participate in a way which had been difficult when the activities and interactions were all in person.

The schools and sites found the connection through the platform reassuring during a challenging period. The team also ran additional supports (called CARE – Collaboration and Reflection Energiser sessions) every week, for leaders to drop in and support each other, share ideas about how they were managing through Covid, for example, how they were getting the technology into students’ homes.

Covid was an uncertain time. The team had to be innovative and agile to respond to the situation. Much of the collaborative networking model is based on trust. Going virtual could have undermined that trust. However, school leaders continued to benefit from the work even with the digital adaptions. The interactions returned to a hybrid combination with face-to-face when it was appropriate.

Teacher and leader retention, and the support and wellbeing of educators has become another increasingly important outcome of The Connection.

Once again, all our funders stuck with the work, providing critical support.

This period became a time of consolidation, reassessment and repositioning. Schools and sites were preoccupied with the crisis through most of 2020-22, and teacher shortages and student wellbeing were top of mind.

Post Covid, a significant teacher shortage has emerged globally. Teacher and leader retention, and the support and wellbeing of educators has become another increasingly important outcome of The Connection. It is one of the reasons collaborative networks are more recently gaining deeper traction in education systems both across Australia and internationally.

Partnership model

The team secured expert partners to bring specific skills and knowledge to the sites and schools from 2023. These included for:

  • early years education, a partnership with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
  • Aboriginal education with Culturally Nourishing Schooling (CNS) at UNSW
  • rural, remote and regional education with the UNSW and
  • digital literacies with Melbourne Metrics in the Education Faculty at the University of Melbourne.

This brought a new, rich dimension to the network.

At the same time the team shared with the partners the methodologies of collaborative networking to broaden the impact of their own work.

For example, with support for five years from the Ian Potter Foundation, and our partnership with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, we have extended our footprint to 12 early learning sites in Victoria, South Australia, NSW, Tasmania, ACT and Queensland.

Contributors to The Connection’s success

The main contributors to The Connection’s success include:

1. Recognising that real change takes time

One of SVA’s core values is that real change takes time, and The Connection’s journey exemplifies this. The initial strategic plan was for five years, and SVA committed to supporting the initial schools for five years to give them the time to demonstrate outcomes.

With SVA’s backing and consistent funder support over 10 years, the initiative has been able to scale its impact even further, growing and surviving through challenging times particularly Covid.

2. Thoughtful selection of schools and school leaders

Selecting the right schools and site leaders using rigorous due diligence processes has been critical in The Connection’s success. Leaders want to be part of it; no one is forced to participate or contribute, and all are committed to building improvements.

The team used a variety of tools and evidence to identify which schools were primed to collaborate –motivated by a shared common morale purpose.

Leaders often said it was energising to meet peers who were also inspired and persevering in challenging circumstances.

Leaders often said it was energising to meet peers who were also inspired and persevering in challenging circumstances and committed to getting better outcomes.

As Louise Reynolds says: “Although I’d been a principal for six years and had had opportunities for networking through the department, it wasn’t until I got into the room with the other principals in The Connection that I felt that I was with my tribe: like-minded leaders who were open to possibilities.

“We inspired each other and felt like we were growing faster than we ever had.”

3. Creating genuine partnerships with schools; open and ready to learn

The Connection team has built genuine partnerships with the schools and sites based on trust and another core SVA value of being open and ready to learn. Through the intentional design of the networking activities, the team actively seeks feedback and inputs, listens and shares insights and challenges. The team learns with, and from, the schools and the schools and sites learn from each other. The Connection team isn’t coming in as the expert imposing itself on the schools and sites.

4. Crossing state and international borders; diversity is a strength

There is a huge benefit for the leaders in The Connection working across state and international borders. Normally it’s rare that school leaders and educators get exposed to what happens in another site, or system.  But here they have been exposed to what other systems are doing; things they’d never thought of. It has helped to overcome the silos and break the ‘echo chambers’ of beliefs and practices that schools and sites, or education systems, can get stuck in.

As Louise Reynolds says, “It’s given us access to thinkers and researchers, what’s on the horizon in education.”

The Connection also benefited from engaging in international networks of educators which stretched the offerings, for example being a member of the global education leadership partnership (GELP) initiated many of the international partnerships to travel to the UK and USA extending the professional learning.

Connecting with other education professionals also designing similar work provided a sounding board which gave the Connection team clarity and insights for the next iterations of the design.

5. Continuous evaluation and improvement

From the beginning, The Connection was committed to evaluating the program and using the evidence for evolving and improving along the journey. For example, the RMIT evaluation provided insights about the non-negotiable features of the program that subsequently have been maintained as fundamental.

6. Agility in the face of challenges

The Connection’s adaptability means that it can be applied and aligned to priorities in government policy with flexibility. As a result, additional focus areas for education equity have emerged.

The response to the challenges of Covid was a clear example of having the flexibility to respond to changing needs and circumstances.  

Where next?

SVA never intended to nurture and hold the program indefinitely – the endgame was always to have it taken up by government or find some other suitable place in the broader system. After extensive conversations, it was announced in November 2024 that The Smith Family would be that home, offering an opportunity and potential for scaling to a bigger footprint.

A national children’s education charity reaching more than 178,000 children and young people, The Smith Family is well placed to evolve The Connection.

There’s strong alignment between the values of the work and the two organisations. The Smith Family has a deep and demonstrated commitment to education equity, influencing the national school reform agenda, around relevant issues to the work of The Connection. The Smith Family is also a trusted partner of government and across the education sector. The opportunities of this new phase of work are exciting.

… school leaders verify that through developing their leadership capacity this work has changed the educational outcomes for more than 80,000 school children.

What The Connection has learned about effective education leadership and equity and what drives better outcomes can also be shared more broadly across Australia through the work of The Smith Family.

Perhaps the best evidence of the success of The Connection is that there are now networks in education emerging in more places, and the concept is being incorporated in state government policies. That is great justification for the investment that funders, supporters, SVA and The Connection team have made.

We do know from our research and what the school leaders verify, that through developing their leadership capacity this work has changed the educational outcomes for more than 80,000 school children. This is the real prize.

For more information, contact The Connection

Author: Sue Cridge, Founding Director, The Connection


References

1 Thomson S, De Bortoli L & Underwood  CPISA 2015: Reporting Australia’s results, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), 2017, accessed Jan 2025

2 B Caldwell, Strategic school partnerships: core competencies and capabilities of school leaders, Educational Transformations, commissioned by SVA, Sept 2013.