Great Leaders, Great Schools: Springboard Trust Creating Positive Change For Tamariki

By learning with Springboard Trust, school principals vastly improve their leadership as well as their ability to engage and mobilise the entire community.

Our latest set of impact reports, to be released over the coming months, highlight the myriad ways in which Springboard Trust’s unique cross-sector model enhances tumuaki development and brings communities together in service of better student outcomes.

This begins with the 2021 Impact Report, a full accounting of the depth and breadth of learning that principals undertook with us last year. Partnering with cross-sector volunteers, principals and senior leaders in our schools have learned the fundamentals of strategic thinking and planning, distributed leadership and measuring impact across a school.

In 2021, Springboard Trust delivered programmes to more than 200 tumuaki across the motu, with key short-term impacts including:

• Improved leadership, planning and resourcing
• Increased stakeholder (board, staff, whānau, student and community) engagement
• Heightened collaborative practice across schools

“The impact we’re seeing through this evaluation is in line with what the research tells us about educational leadership and its impacts for whole schools and communities,” notes Springboard Trust CEO Dale Bailey.

“Great leaders really do make great schools. Springboard Trust focuses on specific levers for change, ones we know have lasting impact for all students, and it is so heartening to see this reflected year after year, particularly given the challenges of the last 24 months.”

Analysis of more than 200 individual surveys, rubrics and debriefs has highlighted that not only are Springboard Trust’s programmes beneficial for schools, but also the critical role that our cross-sector model plays in this learning. By bringing together expert leaders from the public, private and philanthropic sectors with tumuaki, the ako / reciprocal learning gives life to all involved.

“We’re seeing not just tangible improvements in school environments, but volunteers going back to their workplaces with refreshed understanding of education, of their own leadership – often new skills for their own development as well,” Bailey remarks.

“We call it cross-sector magic for a reason.”

Despite ongoing disruption from COVID-19, Springboard Trust’s vision of transforming schools together remains clear and continues to be achieved – with impacts reaching far beyond the scope of school leadership.

The Springboard Trust 2021 Impact Report is available here.

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