Working together

Authors

T Myers, Catholic Education Office, Sydney

Abstract

A new model of co-operation between Catholic primary and secondary schools in Sydney's East provides a great success in its first year of operation. No individual school is an island, entire of itself; schools are part of a wider web of interconnections. They are dependent on their communities - on families, governments, local enterprises, and in the case of Catholic schools, their parishes - and vice versa. That understanding underpins a new kind of organisation in the form of district school councils that has been trialled and progressively adopted by many of the 147 schools in Sydney's Catholic Archdiocese over the past five years, but it also underpins a new liaison project in Sydney's Eastern Shire Catholic schools. Their district school council - comprising principals, parents representatives and clergy - meets once a term to share information and develop co-operative programs. The major aim is to form deeper connections between these schools and create a K-to-12 identity in their local community. The article outlines the council's activities, particularly those initiated in the last 12 months by its liaison officer, Cathy Sip, a former teacher at De La Salle Cronulla. [Author abstract, ed]

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